Madeleine Moon: What recent discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues and the First Secretary on antisocial behaviour in Wales.

Madeleine Moon: My local free paper, The Recorder, carries this dire warning on its front page: "Yobs will cause a death: RNLI warns 'someone will drown' in harbour". We have a problem—I have discussed it with Phil Missen, who is our local Royal National Lifeboat Institution organiser—with youngsters jumping 20 ft into Porthcawl harbour in front of the lifeboat as it is being launched and physically and verbally abusing the lifeboat crew. What assistance can my hon. Friend offer to the lifeboat crew to protect them given that my local authority is unable to confirm long-term commitment to funds for youth organisations, even the Scouts and the Guides?

Nick Ainger: I share my hon. Friend's concern about those incidents of antisocial behaviour; clearly, this particular case must be tackled quickly. We have given the police and local councils the tools to do that job. Between 2003 and 2006, the safer communities fund has allocated £8 million to community safety partnerships in Wales for locally determined projects aimed at tackling antisocial behaviour. Since 2003, Bridgend has received £352,000 from the fund. We have given the tools to the police and to the local councils; those powers should now be exercised and I urge Bridgend county borough council to do so.

Roger Williams: One of the recent findings of the Select Committee on Wales as regards antisocial behaviour and the police was that there is no agreed uniform definition of antisocial behaviour. That means that residents in my constituency who live close to rugby clubs can expect antisocial behaviour and rowdiness with no action taken against the perpetrators. What action can the Minister take on having an agreed definition of antisocial behaviour so that everybody living in Wales can expect the same service and treatment from police forces?

Nick Ainger: The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point. I would argue that the Licensing Act 2003 gives local residents the opportunity to object to the way in which particular licensed premises are being run, because it deals not only with what happens in the licensed premises but what happens around them. The Act gives people the opportunity to take up that matter with local police and the local authority, which is now responsible for licensing. Irrespective of whether we give a clear definition of antisocial behaviour, people know when they are experiencing it, and they should always report it and expect the authorities to react accordingly.

Albert Owen: While it is right to be tough on those who make the lives of people in our communities hell through antisocial behaviour, does my hon. Friend agree that it is also important to reward people, particularly the young, for good social behaviour? Does he further agree that it is important that when community planning for facilities is going through, young people have an input so that they feel a sense of ownership in their own community?

Andrew Robathan: I should declare that I am a farmer and in receipt of ridiculous subsidies through the common agricultural policy. As the Minister knows, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs tells us that the single farm payment is meant to make life simpler for farmers. I am not sure whether it does, but that is way that we are going. However, Wales intends to have a different scheme. How can that be right? If something is good for me if I farm in Herefordshire, surely it must also be good if I farm across the border in Monmouthshire. Will the Minister explain matters and what the scheme will do for Welsh hill farmers?

Nick Ainger: There is a difference in the single farm payment's calculation in England and in Wales. In England, the system ultimately depends on a single, flat-rate, area payment, starting with historic payments. In Wales, we are going to stick with historic payments because Wales has so many small farms, especially in the uplands. When the discussions were taking place, it was felt that a single farm payment based on historic payments would be the best way in which to continue the support for Wales's small rural farms.

Lembit �pik: The Minister knows that, in an effort to remain financially viable, many farmers are diversifying into other activities, including motor cycle off-road sports. Will he confirm that farmers will not jeopardise their single farm payments by allowing those off-road activities on their land? Will he also confirm that the promised end-of-year review into the position will consider the rights of motor sports enthusiasts, including motor cycle off-road enthusiasts, and the economic pressures that farmers face?

Nick Ainger: As I have already said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Conwy, the Government are already tackling those administrative problems. Moreover, it is worth noting what Citizens Advice actually said in its report:
	We firmly support tax credits as a vehicle for directing substantial extra money towards lower income families, and we want the system to work effectively for all who are entitled to the extra help.
	That is something that those families are getting now, and that they never did when the hon. Gentleman's party was in power.

Bill Wiggin: A man from Bridgend reported that he had had a bill for 4,000 following overpayment of child tax credits, despite the fact that that tax credit agency admitted that he had provided the correct information at every point. Another man, from Abergele, was paid 400 too much each month, despite making numerous phone calls to query the amount that the family were being paid. Nearly 2 billion of the tax credits paid out over the past year were overpayments, and the Government are hounding people into a financial nightmare. How can the Minister expect to improve the standard of living for children in Wales if this continues?

Mark Tami: What plans he has to introduce legislation affecting the position of list members in the National Assembly for Wales.

Peter Hain: The White Paper Better Governance for Wales, promises to prevent constituency candidates standing as list members in line with our manifesto commitments.

Peter Hain: The answer is yes. Plaid Cymru list Members have now been caught red-handed abusing the system in the Assembly. The Presiding Officer should have a proper inquiry into the abuse of taxpayer's money by Plaid Cymru list Members. These instructions from Assembly Member Leanne Wood are a consistent abuse. I will read out another example

Ian Lucas: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in towns such as Wrexham, small business is doing very well thanks to innovative and exciting projects like the new e-business incubator. We are changing the face of employment in Wrexham, so that more people are self-employed and more people are doing well for themselves. Is that not welcome, and is it not about time we started talking Wales up rather than down?

Peter Hain: Regular discussions. In order to release resources to frontline services, Jobcentre Plus offices are being modernised in Wales to deliver more flexible services.

Tony Blair: I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for coming, with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, to yesterday's meeting. Over the next few days, those who were present at that meeting will work with the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary to establish a network of people who will go out into the community and take the very clear message about the mainstream Muslim community and its views throughout the country. They have also agreed to a meeting with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, who raised at yesterday's meeting a very important point: the desire to make sure that sufficient numbers of people are recruited into the police from the Muslim community. He also expressed his very strong sense that, just as the police have considerably improvedI think that everyone will accept thistheir community relations over the past few years, over the next few years, we need to ensure that that finds its response and echo in people from the Muslim community joining the police force, and being willing to serve in it.

Michael Howard: The Prime Minister also referred a week ago to the need for international action, on which he has just touched. Since then, there has been a particular focus on Pakistan, where the Government and President Musharraf have pledged their full support in the fight against terrorism. Can the Prime Minister update the House on the work that is being carried out with the Government of Pakistan, including keeping the madrassahs under closer scrutiny?

Tony Blair: Yes, I can. I have spoken to President Musharraf about it and there is a real willingness and desire on the part of the Pakistani Government to deal with the madrassahs that are preaching this type of extremism. I think that we all know that the roots go very deep and are not always to be found in our own country, but in other countries, too. We are also looking into the possibility of holding a conference that would bring together some of the main countries that are areas of concern and that have been closely involved in these issues in order to take concerted action across the world to try to root out this type of extremist teaching.
	There are somewhere in the region of 26 countries that have suffered from al-Qaeda and its associated networks since 1993. Obviously, there is a huge well of support and understanding for the problems that we have recently faced in this country. We need to be very clear that, although the terrorists will use all sorts of issues to justify what they do, the roots of it go very deep and are often not to be found in this country alone, so international action is also necessary.

Tony Blair: I am very happy to go back and consult the security services and the police about that. My own view has always been that if we possibly can use intercept evidence, we should, because of the obvious value that it can provide in certain cases. The difficulty is that, up to now, we have been advised by the security services that the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. However, in the light of what has happened, it is obviously sensible to go back and consult them again. It is not an issue on which there is an objection of principle to using such evidence. On the contrary, as a matter of principle, I would prefer to use it rather than not use it, but we have to take account of our advice.
	I understand that we are going to have a meeting next week about the new legislation. I am pleased at the progress that has been made in co-operation with the Opposition and we will have a further opportunity to run through some of these issues again. I will make sure that we can provide an update then. It is the right approach to try to take action in every single one of these related spheres: in respect of the legislation, we must ensure that it is tightened, where necessary; in respect of those who preach and incite hatred, we want enhanced ability to deport them where they are not British citizens; in respect of international action; and in respect also of our own Muslim community. We are now moving forward in the right direction on a series of fronts. Once again, I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his support, as it has been very important to send out a unified signal to the country.

Michael Howard: I look forward to our discussions next week. The Prime Minister will know that, just two years ago, the Newton report pointed out that the Republic of Ireland is the only country with a ban as extensive as ours on the use of intercept evidence and I look forward to discussing those matters with him further next week.
	Yesterday, The New York Times reported that, less than a month before 7 July, the joint terrorism analysis centre had concluded that
	at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the UK.
	Is there anything that the Prime Minister can say to put that report in context and, in light of that report, is there any action that he intends to take to reassure people?

Mike Hall: The Healthcare Commission published its The State of Healthcare 2005 report on Monday. The report shows that there has been a dramatic reduction in hospital waiting times and an improvement in the treatment and care of people suffering from cancer and coronary heart disease, but does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to do still more to improve health inequalities? On the Windmill Hill estate in my constituency, the Halton primary care trust has recently withdrawn GPs' surgeries. Will he join me in pressing the Halton PCT to reinstate GP services, so that better health facilities can be enjoyed across the whole of my constituency? Will he also say something to encourage people to use NHS Direct?

Tony Blair: No, I do not agree with that assessment, but, obviously, there is a very serious situation, particularly when, for example, one of the Sunni representatives on the constitutional committee was assassinated yesterday, simply for trying to play his part in bringing about a democratic Iraq. But the issue that I come back to the whole time is that, if that terrorism is happening in Iraq and it is aimed at destroying the possibility of that country becoming a democracy, what should our response be. My response is to stand firm and see it through because, in the end, if Iraq becomes the country that Iraqis want it to benamely, a democracythat will send a hugely powerful signal out not just to Iraq and the region, but against that type of terrorism the world over.

Tony Blair: I cannot give a specific date. What I can say is that the strategy that is being pursued is, first, to build the democratic process in Iraq. That democratic process is supported by the 8 million Iraqis who came to vote, by the United Nations and by anyone who wants Iraq to become the country that it could be. That constitutional process will continue with the drafting of the constitution and then with the parliamentary elections in December. The second thing is to build up the capability of the Iraqi security forces themselves. That capability is being built the entire time. Indeed, the Iraqi forces are actually taking on many of the patrols down in the south now. Even around Baghdad, there are now joint multinational forces and Iraqi operations.
	Those are the two key things, but as we saw with what President Karzai of Afghanistan was saying yesterday, the same perverted ideology that is trying to kill people in whatever country it can is trying to prevent Afghanistan and Iraq from becoming democracies. What is important sometimes, when people talk about their concern for Iraq or Afghanistan, is to let the legitimate voices of those people who have supported democracy in those countries be heard and to let them be the people who represent the true voice of Iraq and Afghanistannot the representatives of the ideology that is trying to kill decent folk in both countries.

Ashok Kumar: May I praise my right hon. Friend for his great courage and conviction in tackling terrorism and the way that he has championed the cause of multiculturalism and kept that spirit alive, given the difficult circumstances? But may I also make him aware that the attacks, these difficult times and the bombings that have taken place affect not only the Muslim community, but the wider Asian community and in particular, the Hindu and Sikh communities? May I say to him that, in the spirit that he has opened up the dialogue with the Muslim community, will he open up the same dialogue with the Hindu and Sikh communities, so that we can work with them together in the greater interests of community relations to keep the spirit of multiculturalism alive?

Tony Blair: I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman at least concedes that there has been substantial extra funding. Decision making on the configuration of local services must be a matter for the PCTthat is the procedure with which I think we all agree. I understand that the proposals for Evesham community hospital are at an early stage and I expect that the PCT will take into account all representations, including the hon. Gentleman's, before taking any decisions. However, it is worth highlighting something that he implied, which is that there has been a substantial increase in funding[Hon. Members: Where is it going?] I shall say where. The funding is going into the 87 million private finance initiative Worcestershire royal hospital, which is now completed and operational, and into the 1,800 more nurses, 240 more consultants and 140 more doctors. In other words, it is going into improve health care services.

Tony Blair: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of international students, who add 5 billion to the UK economy, and of not making procedures over-burdensome, but he knows why we have introduced tougher requirements. We needed to make sure that people who come to this country as students are coming to take bona fide courses at bona fide places and that they will not switch from a student visa and claim asylum as some have done over the years, or do other things. That is why we have had to tighten our procedures. We are trying to strike the right balance and I shall certainly consider the points made by the right hon. Gentleman, but it is important that we send a strong signal. Yes, the overwhelming majority of students come here for bona fide reasonsto studybut the system has been open to certain abuses and it is important that we close down the opportunities for abuse.

Tony Blair: I completely condemn those attacks, whether they come from republicans or whether they are attacks that loyalists are committing on one another. There is no justification for any of it, and people must realise that if we want to make progress in Northern Ireland the violence from whatever quarter has to stop.

Charles Clarke: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to bring the House up to date with developments since my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made his statement to the House on Monday 11 July[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members leave the Chamber quietly, please?

Charles Clarke: A total of 56 people are now known to have died as a result of the explosions. The identities of all of these have now been formally confirmed through the relevant procedures. Support and advice continue to be given to the families affected as requested, in what remain very difficult and traumatic circumstances. It is possible that this total may rise as the police investigation of the very difficult scenes continues. Twenty-seven people remain in hospital undergoing treatment at present.
	Until this week all four explosion sites have remained crime scenes, and at this point three still are. As the police have made clear, it is vital to their work that no clues or evidence are overlooked or destroyed. However, Transport for London is optimistic that Aldgate station, which has been handed back to London Underground by the police, may be returned to service by next Monday, 25 July. The train has now been removed from the Edgware Road site, although police remain at the scene. Subject to completion of the forensic work and a fuller inspection of the tracks at Edgware Road, it is hoped that a full Circle line service may be restored in a couple of weeks. It is not possible at present to say how long restoration of the Russell Square site may take. Roads around Upper Woburn place remain closed at present, pending conclusion of the police forensic investigation of the site.
	There has been a great deal of speculation about the ongoing investigation. The police will continue to give regular updates, but I do not intend to make detailed comments, since to do so could be damaging and might impede any resulting prosecutions.
	The House will however be aware that there has been rapid progress on identifying productive lines of inquiry. A very large volume of information, including witness statements, CCTV footage, and evidence from the scenes and recovered from searched addresses, is already being analysed. The police and security services are to be congratulated on their work in this complex and fast-moving investigation. We are all determined to take whatever steps are needed to identify, track down and bring to justice all those involved in instigating, planning, and supporting these terrible crimes.
	I turn to the forthcoming counter-terrorism legislation. As the House will know, I wrote to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) and the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) on Friday setting out our initial proposals for inclusion in the Bill. Copies of my letter were placed in the Libraries of both Houses. On Monday I met the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen to discuss the matter, and I should like to place on record my appreciation of the helpful and constructive tone that they both adopted.
	My letter set out the main items which the Government believe should be included in the counter-terrorism Bill. I should stress that these proposals were drawn up before 7 July. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister indicated in his statement last week, we are discussing with the police and intelligence agencies whether there might be further powers that they need in the light of those events and the subsequent investigation.
	The heart of the Bill is the creation of three new offences. The first of these criminalises acts preparatory to terrorism in order to ensure that early intervention does not mean that those responsible, who may be planning very serious terrorist crimes, should escape prosecution. The new offence will capture those planning serious acts of terrorism.
	The second proposed new offence focuses on indirect incitement to terrorism. Direct incitement to commit acts of violence is already a criminal offence. The proposal targets those who, although not directly inciting, glorify and condone terrorist acts, knowing full well that the effect on their listeners will be to encourage them to turn to terrorism. So indirect incitement, when it is done with the intention of inciting others to commit acts of terrorismthat is an important qualificationwill become a criminal offence.
	Thirdly, the Bill will deal with the giving and receiving of terrorist training. Our existing law already criminalises much activity that could fall within that description, but we want to close the gaps to make sure that anyone who gives or receives training in terrorist techniques is covered. Legislating for those last two offences will enable the UK to ratify the Council of Europe convention on the prevention of terrorism, which I very much welcome. The Bill will also make a number of other amendments to existing legislation, which are set out in the letter that I have placed in the Library of the House.
	I am very pleased to say that when we met on Monday, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden and the hon. Member for Winchester indicated that they were, in principle, prepared to support all these measures. Of course they will want to see, and contribute to, the detail as it emerges, and I have undertaken to keep them informed of developments during the summer. I am grateful to them for their support and hope that we can continue to proceed by means of consensus. In that spirit, both of them indicated to me on Monday that they were in favour of the Government decoupling this legislation from the further parliamentary consideration of control orders, to which I gave a commitment during the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, and bringing it forward for introduction in October. They further indicated to me that they were in favour of proceeding straight to introduction, without pre-legislative scrutiny, provided that they could have early sight of the draft legislation and that the normal parliamentary procedures and timetable were followed in both Houses.
	On that basis, we are proposing to bring forward the legislation as soon as practicable when the House returns. We propose to return to the issue of control orders in the spring after we have the report from the independent reviewer, Lord Carlile. He is not only the reviewer of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, because he performs a similar function in respect of the Terrorism Act 2000. He published his most recent report on the operation of that Act on 26 May and I am grateful to him for a typically thorough and thoughtful report. Of course his report was published before the terrible events of 7 July, but he has since confirmed that his overall conclusions remain. I have today published the Government's response to his report and placed copies in the Library. We have given effect to several of his recommendations and are giving active consideration to others.
	In the days and weeks since 7 July, many have raised concerns about extremists who seek to come to this country to foment terrorism, or to provoke others to commit terrorist acts. I have reviewed the Government's powers to exclude such people. The Home Secretary has powers to exclude individuals on the grounds that their presence in the UK is not conducive to the public interest. There is no statutory right of appeal against the exclusion decision, but of course it can be challenged through judicial review. In addition, immigration and entry clearance officers have similar powers. Any exclusion by them would generate a right of appeal. This power is currently informed by the operation of a warnings index of named individuals. I have concluded that these powers need to be applied more widely and systematically both to people before they come to the UK and when they are here.
	In recent decades, for all Home Secretaries, the criteria for exercising these powers have generally been grounds of national security, public order or risk to the UK's good relations with a third country. In going beyond these grounds, we rightly need to tread very carefully indeed in areas that relate to free speech. However, in the circumstances that we now face, I have decided that it is right to broaden the use of these powers to deal with those who foment terrorism, or seek to provoke others to commit terrorist acts. To that end, I intend to draw up a list of unacceptable behaviours that fall within those powersfor example, preaching, running websites or writing articles that are intended to foment or provoke terrorism. The list will be indicative rather than exhaustive and we will consult on it, because it is important that we work with the communities.
	Where there are grounds for considering that a person has been engaged in such activities, or will do so in the UK, exclusion will be considered. I have asked my officials together with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the intelligence agencies to establish a full database of individuals around the world who have demonstrated the relevant behaviours. That database will be available to entry clearance and immigration officers and will be added to the current warnings index. I should make it clear that entry on that index does not necessarily mean exclusion, but in all cases it will trigger the possibility of a decision to exclude by Ministers.
	In addition to using that list to ensure that those non-conducive powers are applied more widely and systematically at the point of entry, the specified unacceptable behaviours will not be permitted for individuals who have leave to enter or remain in this country. That power arises in various categories: for those here temporarily, for example, as visitors, students or workers, or their dependants and for those with indefinite leave to remain, any breach will lead to termination of their leave or deportation; for asylum seekers, we will, as a general rule, look to detain them and fast-track their claims; and for refugees, we will consider whether the behaviours described fall within one of the categories for exclusion from protection under the 1951 refugee convention.
	We have already made it clear in the changes announced on refugee status earlier this week that any breach by a refugee of the categories for exclusion will trigger an immediate review of their status. We are already consulting on changes to the conditions for leave to enter and remain for ministers of religion, and we will consider with the faith communities whether further measures are needed.
	I am also urgently seeking agreement with EU and other countries on the mutual exchange of information on exclusion decisions. The power of exclusion is necessarily targeted at those outside the UK. When people who are already in the UK engage in the kind of behaviour that I have identified and described, it may well be appropriate to deport them under statutory powers. I will ensure that a consistent stance is taken in relation to both deportation and exclusions. In the past, there have been some successful challenges to proposed deportations under article 3 of the European convention on human rights. For that reason, we have actively been seeking memorandums of understanding with a number of Governments to address those legal concerns.
	I am pleased to announce today that the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan have reached agreement in principle on the provisions of such a memorandum of understanding, regulating the arrangements by which assurances regarding the treatment of particular individuals can be sought prior to their deportation. The formal signing of the memorandum of understanding will be arranged shortly, and a copy of the text will be placed in the Library once the signing ceremony has taken place.
	I do not in general intend to comment on the position of particular individuals. In light of recent public comments, however, the House may be interested to know that I understand that Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi is not now planning to visit the UK in the near future. If he were to seek to do so, I would of course have to consider whether his presence would be conducive to the public good. I will follow the approach that I have set out today in the case of Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed and other individuals whose names are in the public domain.
	I want to conclude by applauding the efforts that the leaders of the Muslim communities are now making to improve their capacity to fight extremism and protect young people. Positive proposals are emerging from a series of meetings between my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, myself and others on strengthening our capacity to fight the destructive and nihilist philosophy of those who promoted the London bombings.
	As I hope that I have demonstrated, there is unity of purpose. The Government want to work with other parties to ensure that we have the most effective anti-terrorism legislation on our statute book. Similarly, we want to work with the Muslim community to isolate and weaken dangerous extremists. I am grateful to all engaged in that important work, which I hope commands Parliament's support.

Charles Clarke: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his personal remarks, which I very much appreciate, and for the political support that he and his party have given to the whole of our approach. It is very important that we should work in the way that he has described, and I certainly can confirm my absolute determination to continue working in that way over the coming period.
	The right hon. Gentleman raised several specific points. The offence relating to acts preparatory to an act of terrorism is intended to facilitate the prosecution of individuals known to have instigated an act of terrorism or to have been planning, preparing or conspiring to commit an act of terrorism. That is because there is a requirement to protect the public, which means that the police and security agencies may have to intervene early when they become aware of a terrorist cell, with the consequence that it may not be possible to know what precise atrocity was being planned. Indeed, the terrorists themselves might not have concluded on what form of action they would follow. That is the issue that we are trying to address with that offence.
	I can commit the Government to making early drafts available in September and to doing so more widely than simply to the Opposition parties. That will allow us to look at where we are and see where we are going.
	On interceptors evidence, the right hon. Gentleman will know that I still do not agree with the point that he is putting. However, as the Prime Minister made clear at Question Time, there is no issue of principle here; there is a practical issue of how to deal with it in a proper way. We shall continue discussing that point.
	On ports, we shall continue to keep the situation very much under review. We shall look consistently at the security arrangements on ports, but I have to say that the co-operation in the way that the various agencies are working together is extremely good at this point.
	Finally, the points that the right hon. Gentleman made about the community are absolutely true. I want to address two dimensions. From the very beginning, from Thursday 7 July, we have brought together faith leaders of different faiths who are already working strongly together and who need to continue to do so. They have been exemplary in the way in which they have operated, and we need to continue to develop that.
	The second strand, as the right hon. Gentleman implied, is to work with the Muslim community in particular to strengthen those forces within that community who want to develop their relationship with the wider society in a strong and constructive way. There are interesting issues about the training of imams that need to be addressed. I note that the Church of England and the Catholic church have, through their teacher training colleges, which are now university colleges, found a range of ways of looking at some of the issues. It may well be worth exploring whether work could be taken forward in that way for the Muslim community and other faith communities. I hope that that will arise out of the conversations that we will hold.

David Lidington: Will the Home Secretary thank the chief constable of Thames Valley for the professionalism with which his officers and the Met carried out their operation in Aylesbury last week? Will he welcome the denunciation of terror and the strong support for the police expressed by the imam and the leaders of the mosque in Aylesbury? Does he agree that alongside the counter-terrorist measures that he is rightly bringing forward, we as a country need to address the reasons why a minority of young men from our Muslim communities feel so disaffected, not only from mainstream white society but from the older generations of their own communities, that they have, in a minority of cases, wanted to listen to those who were urging extremism and hatred?

John Battle: I thank my right hon. Friend for his calm and measured leadership in the past two weeks. Will he join me in offering a word of tribute to people in the Burley Lodge area in Leeds? I rushed home on Tuesday because they were evacuated from their homes while the whole area was searched for a bomb factory. When I got to the community centre, I found that only 34 people from the 470 homes that had been evacuated were there because the rest had been taken into the homes of families, friends and neighbours, cutting across racial, religious and cultural divides. That quietly demonstrates the forbearance and tolerance that could be a hope for the future in our communities.
	I thank my right hon. Friend for the way in which the police and the security services worked together with the local community at the tape barrier during the crisis; that was a model of police and community relations. Does he agree, however, that while we work on the taskforce initiative and on building a consensus for necessary new legislation, it will be crucial in the next few weeks that all sections of the community, including peoples of different faiths and none, work together to ensure that we are vigilantwatching out for each otherwithout turning into vigilantes? Life could be difficult in our neighbourhoods unless we develop a deep respect and calm in our neighbourhoods while we work to address the complex challenges that this has thrown up.

Charles Clarke: On the JTAC report, I will commit myself simply to the remarks made by the Prime Minister during Prime Minister's questions.
	On the more general point, there is a serious intellectual flabbiness on the part of those who argue that Iraq was the cause of this issue. If one looks back over the past 10 years at the appalling atrocities that have taken place across the world, including 9/11 and other events, the fact is that many of them took place in different circumstances before the Iraq war was engaged upon.
	It is very important to say that large numbers of perfectly reasonable people think that the Government's position on Iraq was wrong, but that does not mean that they are on the edge of being terrorists. It is perfectly okay to disagree with the Government. The Government had to come to a decision; I think that it was the right one. People can have their different opinionsthat is perfectly legitimate and part of the debate that can take place. However, it is completely mistaken to implyI am not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman implied it in quite this sensethat if one says that the Government's position on Iraq was wrong, that takes one to the edge of moving towards a terrorist attack.

Charles Clarke: I absolutely associate myself with my hon. Friend's congratulations to the Bedfordshire police and the communities in Luton. There were difficult problems there and they were handled extremely well. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's efforts to try to move matters forward.
	I shall not say what the relationship will be between the legislation and the group that she mentioned. However, I stress that the measure will cover the issue that she raised. I do not draw any specific conclusion for the particular group to which my hon. Friend referred, but the issue will be addressed. We have to do that by getting maximum support throughout all communities for dealing with incitement. We cannot simply let it all go on without taking a stance against it. We must address it and we call on all communities to work with us. I commit myself and the Home Office to working as closely as we can with communities in Luton and elsewhere to tackle those matters.

Charles Clarke: Language is a requirement in the new proposals, which we sent out for consultation early this week, just as my hon. Friend suggests. Quizzing on ideological or philosophical views is not yet part of our proposals, but I shall listen to my hon. Friend's comments in the consultation that is currently taking place. On training imams, several senior community leaders made that precise proposal in the meeting that I held with them this morning. I committed myself to considering it carefully for the reasons that my hon. Friend implies. One of the underappreciated points is that Muslim communities are different according to which part of the world they are in. That is why my hon. Friend's point has force and we are obliged to ascertain how it can be taken forward constructively.

Chris McCafferty: May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement and the police on their remarkable forensic work since the London bombings? Will my right hon. Friend comment on recent reports that, following the Madrid bombings, the police were able to identify rapidly the owners of the mobile phones that were used as detonators because, in Spain, an ID card is a prerequisite to purchasing a mobile phone? Does he agree that although ID cards are not a panacea, they may be a useful tool in the fight against terrorism?

Angela Watkinson: The Home Secretary will know that firefighters are in the front line of emergency rescue operations. Tributes have been paid today to the splendid response of our emergency services in the aftermath of the London bombings. He will know that firefighters are often first on the scene, and are therefore the most vulnerable to secondary devices. He will also know that most insurance policies have exclusion clauses for acts of terrorism. What discussions has he had, and what plans has he, to ensure that, should there be similar incidents, our splendid emergency services would have proper protection?

Charles Clarke: The hon. Lady is right. The answer is that I have not yet had any discussions of the kind that she describes, but I am chairing a meeting tomorrow to get responses from a wide range of elements among those who are involved in this approach, to determine what lessons we have learned. I shall ensure that that particular point is considered at the meeting.

Sadiq Khan: Has my right hon. Friend recently re-read the excellent Home Affairs Committee report on terrorism and community relations? If he has, he will have seen that one of the recommendations made in March 2005 was that the Government should ensure that British Muslims were fully engaged in the formulation of any new anti-terror legislation. What steps is he taking to carry out that recommendation? Does he agree that while the consensus between the political parties inside Parliament is welcome, it is even more important for there to be consensus between Parliament and our citizens? All the strands of our community signing up to the anti-terror legislation couldwith a fair wind and God willingresult in there being no more terrorist attacks in the UK.

John Hayes: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Yesterday evening, there was some confusion in the House, and I am sorry to say that it was caused by the Secretary of State for Transport. In relation to the Select Committee being set up to deal with the Crossrail Bill, he may inadvertently have given the House inaccurate information when he said:
	if someone comes along with a petition on something different, such as varying the line of the route, no Government or, indeed, the House, would say that the Select Committee should not consider it.[Official Report, 19 July 2005; Vol. 436, c. 1129.]
	An instruction to a Select Committee of this type is quite explicit, however. The custom of the House is that such a Select Committee can only take petitions from people with a direct or specific interest in the subject. I would therefore ask not that you make a judgment now, which would be unfair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but that Mr. Speaker makes a considered judgment so that before the matter is taken forward, everyone can be clear about what this Select Committee can or cannot be petitioned on, and what it can or cannot consider.

Mark Hendrick: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision about the retention of vehicle registration marks pending transfer.
	Registration numbers are not items of property in their own right, so it is not possible to acquire legal title to them. They are assigned to, and may be withdrawn from, vehicles rather than keepers, by the Secretary of State, as part of the basic registration and licensing process required by law. The registration number is a unique means of identifying a vehicle, primarily for taxation and law enforcement purposes. It is assigned to a vehicle, and it normally remains with that vehicle until it is broken up, destroyed or sent permanently abroad. To meet the widespread interest in personalised and cherished registration numbers, however, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency provides special facilities to allow motorists to acquire and retain the use of particular registration numbers.
	The current provisions stifle choice and flexibility for the individual and for business. Purchasers of marks on retention are understandably wary, as the keeper is currently unable to give away rights to the number at the point of sale by detailing a new third party as the grantee. That means that the purchaser of a retained number has no rights to it until he or she assigns that number to a vehicle, despite financial payment already having been passed to the vendor. In addition, the co-operation of the original grantee is required to effect assignment to the purchaser's vehicle. It is also the grantee who retains the right to purchase extensions to the 12-month period of entitlement for holding a number on certificate, even after the sale of a number to a third party. There is clearly potential for considerable loss to the purchaser of a number on certificate should entitlement to a number be lost through the non-co-operation of the grantee, or simply the practical difficulty of locating that person.
	Attractive registration numbers can fetch large sums. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Minister would be interested in the registration number DT1. Probably not, because he might then be assumed to be a Minister at the Department for Trade and Industry rather than a transport Minister. If his middle name were Oliver, he might want a DOT registration. I am sure that both would be extremely expensive. There is, however, a growing business out there. One company trading from an office just outside my Preston constituency, newreg.com, has been hugely successful in building up such a business in a legitimate fashion, but elsewhere there have been several cases of organised criminal activity aimed at acquiring valuable numbers by illegal means.
	The transfer and retention facilities must therefore be carefully controlled to cut abuse and protect individuals' interests. Only vehicles that exist and are registered at the DVLA, currently licensed, subject to an annual test and available for inspection may participate. Vehicles that satisfy those requirements are generally easier to identify, so their entitlement to the numbers claimed can be more readily verified. Those measures have proved very effective in limiting the scope for abuse, and they are strongly supported by the police.
	Only the registered keeper of a vehicle may apply to transfer or retain its registration mark. As I said earlier, when a vehicle's registration mark is placed on retention the registered keeper becomes the grantee. The Cherished Numbers Dealers Association has requested the addition of a facility to the retention arrangements, to ease the administrative burden on the companies that make up the association and to improve sales.
	Regulations provide that entitlement to a number that is on retention may only pass to a third party on assignment of the number to that person's vehicle via nominee agreement. That arrangement precludes the disposal of a number to a third party who wishes to keep the number on retention. I propose the introduction of an option for third parties to be granted entitlement as soon as the number is placed on hold under the retention facility.
	The Bill would aid the industry involved in buying, selling and transferring registration mark rights, with no additional costs to Government. It would amend the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994 to simplify the administrative process for selling cherished registration numbers, and would be warmly welcomed by many customers as well as cherished-number dealers. The new facilities would allow an improved service at no extra cost to the DVLA or its customers, and would not endanger the accuracy of the record or lead to an increase in fraud. I understand that there has been informal consultation between the DVLA and the CNDA, and that both are strongly in favour of the proposed changes. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Mark Hendrick, Tony Lloyd, Mr. Jamie Reed, Mr. David Drew, Mr. Greg Pope, Mr. Neil Turner, Mr. Mike Hall, Steve McCabe, Paul Farrelly and Derek Wyatt.

Phil Woolas: I will take some interventions when I have set out the principles of the order.
	As I was saying, my right hon. Friend announced that the Government were designating nine authorities. He proposed maximum budget requirements for them at levels that would not be defined as excessive according to principles determined by the Secretary of State. As I said in my written statement to the House on 7 July, when the order was laid, all nine designated authorities challenged the proposed maximum budgets.
	The Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), and I met representatives of all those authorities to listen to their cases. Having carefully considered the representations made by all nine of themand, indeed, by Members present in the Chamber todayand having taken into account all relevant information, the Government have reached the following decisions. We have set a maximum budget for seven authoritiesAylesbury Vale, Daventry, Hambleton, Huntingdonshire, Mid-Bedfordshire, North Dorset and Runnymedeat the levels we proposed on 23 March. We have set a maximum budget for South Cambridgeshire that is 1 million higher than the originally proposed cap, in order to allow the authority time to reduce its over-reliance on reserves.
	We have decided to cancel Sedgemoor's designation and to nominate the authority instead. [Interruption.] I am grateful for that acknowledgement. We propose a notional budget of 11,974,169 for 200506, which takes account of the fact that the authority made a genuine mistake in thinking that special expenses did not count against its budget for capping purposes. I should emphasise that in doing so, we have not set a precedent for the treatment of special expenses in future capping rounds; authorities should be in no doubt that such expenses form part of their budget requirement. There is no parliamentary procedure involved in setting notional budgets for nominated authorities, so the draft order before us does not include Sedgemoor. But Sedgemoor has 21 days from receipt of the letter in which to challenge its proposed notional budget, should it choose to do so.

Phil Woolas: The hon. Gentleman is talking about actual levels of council tax, but the capping order before us today relates to percentage increases. That is the regime and the policy being pursued, and the reason why is that the legislative definitionby which the Secretary of State clearly has to abideis concerned with what constitutes excessive. I understand the point behind the hon. Gentleman's intervention, which other Members representing authorities affected by the measure have also made forcefully, although courteously and reasonably. They have asked whether this is a fair way to proceed, especially in cases where the council tax level is below the average for the type of authority in question. Of course, the counterpoint to that argument is the obvious, arithmetic one: ignoring the average level would simply bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have to look at this issue from the point of view of the council tax payers in the affected areas.

Phil Woolas: I take my hon. Friend's point, but it would be wise of me to exercise caution and to refrain from commenting on the banding process at the moment. As we know, the Lyons review is examining the future of local government finance, and of course, the standard spending assessment has been replaced by the formula spending share. Members who have followed these debates closely will have noted that yesterday, I laid before the House a written ministerial statement announcing the consultation document on the future of the formula. We are consulting on whether we should continue with what is referred to as the notional level of council tax, which often causes confusion and is used by parties across the political spectrum to attack their political opponents. I understand why that happens, but on the whole it does not benefit local government.
	We believe that the action proposed in the draft order, and the separate action that we are taking in respect of Sedgemoor, represent a measured and proportionate response to excessive increases. As we have said on previous occasions, capping decisions are not taken lightly. Indeed, I should like to make it clear for the benefit of the record that capping is very much a last resort, and that 98 per cent. of councils avoided the capping regime. In the first instance, it is for local authorities to set their council tax levels and to justify them to their local electors. But the Government also have a duty to protect council tax payers from the small percentage of authorities that set excessive increases. Indeed, the House agreed to that principle when it discussed local government finance legislation.

Anne McIntosh: Why is the Minister so hooked on percentages? Surely the bottom line for council tax payers like me who live in Hambleton is that it has the third lowest council tax in the country. Why is he penalising prudent Conservative-run councils that are keeping a low council tax?

Phil Woolas: I will give way one more time, but I am conscious that Mr. Speaker has had to apply limits to Back-Bench speakers and that every intervention that I take limits the opportunities of hon. Members to contribute to the debate.

Sarah Teather: I just want to put on record our party's opposition to capping in principle and remind the Minister that it was not so long ago that his party was also opposed to capping in principle. How far on we have moved since!

Phil Woolas: The hon. Gentleman may say that, but that is the very issue that I am addressing. People cannot have their cake and eat itin that regard or any other.
	Given the Government's substantial investment in local government, there is simply no justification for authorities setting excessive council tax increases. We have shown over the past two years that we will take action to deal with that. No authority should assume that it is somehow immune or exempt from possible capping action in the future.
	As I said, our general election manifesto reaffirmed our commitment to use these powers if necessary and as a last resort. It is up to authorities to take that message on board.
	Those hon. Members minded to oppose this order must answer the following questions. Do they support percentage council tax increases that go well into double figures? Do they feel that the Government should take no action on increases on up to 100 per cent.? Will they go out and defend such increases to their constituents?

David Howarth: If hon. Gentleman will not join the Conservative party in the Lobby, will he join us? We are opposed, as he is, to capping in principle.

Clive Betts: I do not think that I ever forced anyone to do anything when I was a Whip. I might have used my powers of persuasion on occasion, but I am always open to persuasion myself.
	I shall not engage in argument over whether the budgets and council tax set by any of the councils in question are right, because I do not know whether they are right or excessive, or whether the councils are efficient or inefficient, and I do not believe that it is my job or that of any Member of Parliament to second-guess decisions that are the responsibility and the role of locally elected councils, which should be accountable to their electorate. That is how such decisions should be made. I honestly believe that when they troop into the Lobby, most Members of this House will not have a clue what they are doingwhat impact the order will have on local services in the areas affected by it. That is why it is important to leave those decisions to local councillors and the electorate to whom they are responsible.
	In the 1980s, many Labour Members, I among them, stood in solidarity together against the capping regimes of the then Conservative Government. We stood with local councillors, local councils, council workers and local voters. We were not arguing about the correctness or otherwise of the spending level that any of the councils had determined; we were supporting the basic principle of local democracy and local determination of levels of spending and tax. We did not call it subsidiarity back then, but that, in effect, was what we were championing.
	The Government are rightly worried about voter turnout at both general and local elections, but capping is not only about central control of local councils, but about removing the democratic rights of local residents, removing voter choice and devaluing local elections. In my view, capping is a fundamental challenge to the very basis of local democracy. To quote again:
	The capping system is patently undemocratic. It serves no wider economic purpose in the control of public expenditure.[Official Report, 9 June 1993; Vol. 226, c. 387.]
	That was my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn. His statement is just as true now as it was in 1993.

Sarah Teather: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), who has so eloquently stated the case against capping and the principles behind this debate.
	For me, the order is without doubt the most extraordinary, absurd and vindictive piece of legislation that I have seen since entering Parliament. Labour's historic third term has produced legislationwith all the civil service manpower that such legislation entails, with all the ministerial time and the meetings with councilsfor what? To save taxpayers in eight authorities as little as 4p a week2 a yearenough to buy perhaps two packets of Polos. In the House of Commons Strangers Bar, it might just buy a pint of Guinness. I cannot help wondering whether the Minister should just save us all time and trouble by popping down to Aylesbury Vale and buying all the good voters a pint; then we could all go home. That would be a lot cheaper than going through the rigmarole of laying an order, voting on it and asking councils to re-bill. We seem to be engaged in the most ridiculous process that I have ever seen, and I hope that I do not see anything more ridiculous in my time as an MP. [Hon. Members: You'll be lucky.] Hon. Members should not get too excited.
	As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe said, capping is an affront to local democracy. It undermines local people's right to decide what services they want and what they are willing to pay for, and it completely undermines local authorities' authority to plan, prioritise and make decisions. As he so eloquently pointed out, it was not so long ago that Labour Members who are now Ministers were making precisely the same point. Surely the final arbiter of choice must always be the ballot box: it is for local electors to decide what they are willing to pay for and when it is time to get rid of a council that has set excessive council tax increases.
	It is no good the Conservatives bleating on about whales and minnows, because it was they who 20 years ago invented rate capping; consequently, they have only themselves to blame. It seems that their policy is to oppose capping when it involves Conservative councils, but they need to oppose capping in principle if they want to be taken seriously.

Sarah Teather: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will send a copy of my speech. I cannot comment on the details of his local council. I am not divinely all-knowingat least not yet.
	Even if we accepted the principle of capping, as some people do although my party does not, the execution of the exercise defies logic. As the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) has pointed out, the proposed council tax increases are tiny in cash terms. The councils concerned are among the lowest-taxing councils in the country: Hambleton has the third lowest council tax of any district and all the councils are in the lower quartile of council taxes, with the exception of South Cambridgeshire district council, which is still in the bottom half of the council tax table. It is mathematically ludicrous and meaningless to cap on the basis of percentage increases in such small tax bases. The Minister claims that the low taxes have been taken into account, but that is patent nonsense. As the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman pointed out, Oldham will have a very large council tax increase53.75 on the band D rate has been proposedcompared with the increases of about 12 that have been set by the councils affected by the order. Capping them seems utterly ridiculous. Far be it from me to accuse the Minister of macho posturing when he is not much taller than me[Laughter.] I simply cannot see the purpose of going though such a fuss and performance in the newspapers to secure such tiny savings for taxpayers.

Sarah Teather: I do not understand the Minister's point. The capping process is wholly arbitrary. I am entirely opposed to capping on principle and I see no reason to except the councils affected by the order.
	Notwithstanding the taxpayers' money wasted debating the order in Parliament, the cost to the councils concerned will be enormous. Hambleton, which is proposing a 12 a year band D increase, estimates that re-billing will cost 50,000. The cost in Daventry will be twice thatabout 100,000. In a final Kafka-esque twist, the councils must find savings to cover the cost of rebilling at the same time as they have to find the savings imposed by capping. That makes the whole situation even worse. The order is not about prudential financial planning; it is absurd centralisation gone completely mad.
	It is worth considering the background to the increases. Many of the district councils in question had among the smallest percentage increases in grant five years in successionindeed, Runnymede had the second-lowest increase in the country over that period. The orderthis mad piece of legislationgoes against all the warm and fluffy noises that the Government have been making about new localism and valuing local government. Where are the supposed freedoms and flexibilities for the three councils that have been judged excellent by the stringent standards of the Government's own comprehensive performance assessment?
	This is not about whether or not a council is judged excellent or whether or not its grant rise is higher than another council's. It is about the principle of local democracy, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe pointed out. It is about local people being able to decide what should be spent on their services and being able to kick out a council if they are not happy with it, or vote it back in if they are happy with its priorities. If the Government seriously wish to tackle council tax rises, they must deal with the balance of funding crisis, and give more power to councils to raise more money themselves. They could start by relocalising business rates. If they seriously wish to end public angst about council tax rises they could scrap the tax, not cap the tax. They could introduce a tax based on people's ability to pay so that yearly rises would not fall so heavily on the elderly and the low-paid.
	This is another piece of centralising nonsense from an uninterested Government who are antagonistic towards local democracy. I urge all hon. Members of sound mind to vote against the motion.

William Hague: As so often, it was my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) who hit the nail on head. He said that he could not accept that the Minister really believed in the case that he was putting to the House. It is a tribute to the Minister that he put the best possible gloss on the argument for the order, but it is deeply worrying that, even after he had done so, it is still one of the weakest cases for a Government order that I have heard in the House for many years.
	An innocent observer who came to the Chamber today might think that our debate was about excessive council taxes. They might expect us to focus on councils that charge a huge amount in taxation or whose council tax is higher than the average, leading to objections from local people and the need for Government intervention. They would be astonished to discover that the order is not about that at all, and deals with some of the most responsible councils in the country which set some of the lowest council taxes. They would be even more astonished to discover that councils such as Hambleton district council, which my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) and I have the privilege of representing, are affected. The council has the highest possible rating for financial management, according to the Government's audit assessment; it sets a council tax less than half the predicted figure under the Government's own formula spending share; for the past three years, its council tax increases have been less than a third of the national average; its 10-year financial strategy is financially robust and is supported locally; and this year it is proposing an increase at band D of 12.
	Most people would give their eye teeth to live under such a council. The vast majority of people in this country would love to do so, so it is extraordinary that councils that fulfil all those criteria are among those whose budgetary freedom is to be taken away under the order. Hambleton district council has the third lowest council tax of any shire district, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) and the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) have pointed out. It proposes an 80 council tax at band D, compared with the 182 suggested by the FSS. The Minister knows the background that made that figure possible. The council transferred its housing stock in 1993, and achieved strong balances as a result. In the past 12 years, it has returned nearly 19 million to local taxpayers. For a time, it set its council tax at or near zero, but as its reserves fall it has planned a series of rises that are small in cash terms but which allow modest improvements in services while keeping within a low and disciplined budget.
	That is a sensible approach to local government. The problem is blindingly obviousthe Government are thinking only in percentage terms, never in cash terms. If a council starts at or near zero, the slightest increase is obviously a huge percentage. According to the Minister's own criteria, if a council set a council tax of 10 and raised it to 11 that would be regarded as an excessive increase. In his opening speech he asked whether we would be prepared to defend the council tax increases in our constituencies. My answer is yes. I am extremely happy to do so, because my council's policies, including its council tax levels, are very popular. Will the Minister therefore answer a question from me in his winding-up speech? Does he acknowledge that a 10 council tax raised to 11 would be deemed excessive and capped under his criteria? It defies all common sense to judge only by percentages at such levels. No Minister would believe that excessive taxation is under way in Hambleton district council or most of the other councils that we are debating today. No Minister believes that it is a badly run council. Even more importantly, no local taxpayer or voter thinks that the increase is excessive. The council has received a total of five complaints about the level of council taxI have received oneso the capping is bizarre and unjustified.
	The capping powers that the House provided for the Government were not designed to be applied to the third-lowest taxing authority in the country. The Minister is sending a bad message to local government: if it is responsible, it will ultimately be penalised; if it has a 10-year strategy it will be forced to abandon it; and if it carries local voters with it that can nevertheless be disregarded by the Government. The bizarre and counterproductive nature of the proposals are demonstrated by what will happen in practice if Hambleton district council, for example, is capped under the order. First, it must deliver a refund to council tax payers. At band D, that will be 5.63. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar has pointed out that each household will therefore only receive a few pennies a week. More than 50,000 will be spent on re-billing. At band A the refund will be only a couple of pounds for each household for the whole year, but the re-billing will cost nearly 1.50. That is the weighty and supposedly wise decision that the Deputy Prime Minister has made. It is the ultimate example of micro-management.
	Secondly, the council will be less able to fund any improvements in local services for which local people have asked, particularly because since the capping decision, it has incurred additional costs of 100,000 to clear up after the severe floods in North Yorkshire. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York has often spoken to Ministers about the floods, because they affected her constituency even more seriously than mine. The Government have not made any allowance for that in their decisions.
	Thirdly, and most alarmingly, if the same criteria were applied in future, either the council would have to use up its balances extremely quickly and cut spending by 28 per cent. in the next few years, leaving it with a budget below the statutory minimum or, having exhausted its balances on an accelerated timetable imposed by the Government it would have to introduce a council tax increase of 91 per cent. in three years' time. I therefore have another question for the Minister. As the Government think that they know better than Hambleton district council and all the people who live in the area, and as they must have thought about the consequences of their capping policy if it continued for several years in a row, do they wish it to plan for a huge council tax rise in a few years' time or for a major reduction in services? It is no good the Minister saying that that is up to the council, because by their actions today the Government are implying that that is not the case. They must therefore take responsibility, whether there is a large council tax rise or a budget below even the statutory minimum in a few years' time.
	It is hard to escape the conclusion, having examined all the arguments, that there was a political motivation before the general election behind the decisions on council tax. I hoped that with the appointment of a new Minister things would change after the election. I did not expect the Minister to say that the proposal was unfair and destructive, although we would have wanted him to do so, but I hoped that he would let it fall quietly to one side. There will be no thanks from local voters to the Government for making this decision, only anger that money is to be wasted on bureaucracy and local wishes overridden.
	Last week at the Local Government Association conference, the Minister of Communities and Local Government said:
	We need to develop a deal for devolution . . .Your starting point should be that power is exercised at the lowest sensible level.
	This week, only five days after he delivered that speech, we have seen how utterly worthless those words have already become. Whatever the motives of the Government, exercising power at the lowest sensible level is certainly not one of them, and it is sad that neither are local democracy or the good financial management of local government, both of which are being damaged today.

Anne McIntosh: It gives me great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). The most pertinent point that he mentioned is the 50,000 cost of reissuing council tax bills. The alternative is to reduce services.
	I repeat my declaration that my husband and I have chosen to live in Hambleton district because of the excellent services that the council provides and the modest council tax it charges for them. It is interesting to note that in the order, the Government have not issued a regulatory impact assessment. That has not been prepared because the Secretary of State cannot make assumptions as to which services and activities may be affected when authorities calculate lower budget requirements.
	I follow my right hon. Friend's question to the Minister with a modest question of my own. The Secretary of State may not be prepared to say which services should be cut, but which services does the Minister think should be cut? I pay tribute to what Hambleton council has done. It is a prudent council that is known for its excellence, as my right hon. Friend said. It is also a listening council that has just conducted a consultation exercise, about which the Minister heard when my right hon. Friend and I made representations to him.
	As a result of that consultation, the council has decided to commit an additional 500,000 to improve housing benefit performance; to improve development control performance; to introduce additional half-fare travel for young people, recognising that in a rural district there are distinct access problems; and to pay for patrol wardens to assist with a cleaner environment and the control of nuisance behaviour and fear of crime. That has been decided even before the council considers its obligations under the Clean Neighbourhood and Environment Act 2005. Having served for some two months on the Committee that considered the Bill, I know how onerous those duties will be. The council will also improve homeless support, recognising the increased number of homeless people. Top of the list, as my right hon. Friend said, is the council's response to the major flooding in the district, which we have experienced three times in the past five yearsin Thirsk in Hambleton district within the Vale of York twice during that time, and in 2000, 2003 and 2005 in the whole of Hambleton district.
	The Minister has not responded to my letter to him and my plea not to proceed with the order in the light of an application from Hambleton district council and North Yorkshire county council under the Bellwin formula. Why are the Department and the Minister not reading across to their responsibilities in that regard? The threshold is 1.5 million, which the council must first spend from its own funds. It has therefore rightly chosen to go in with North Yorkshire county council and Ryedale district council as well. The Minister must live up to his responsibilities. Against that background of three floods in five years, with an application to be submitted within a month of the floods of 19 June, it is irresponsible of the Minister to proceed with the order. My first question to him was which services he suggests Hambleton should cut. My second question is what are the implications of the capping scheme for the Bellwin formula?
	My third question, which I put to the Minister in an earlier intervention, is will he please drop his obsession with percentages and reward councils such as Hambleton district council for the excellent services that they provide, for the prudence with which they seek to deliver those services, and for achieving the third lowest council tax in the country? I pay tribute to the council's performance and to the brilliance of its staff. It must be a kick in the teeth and a slap in the face for those staff, who often work in extremely difficult conditions. In the recent floods, staff from Hambleton district council were among the first, with the emergency services and North Yorkshire county council, to step into people's homes late in the evening of Sunday 19 June and put themselves in harm's way when everyone else was running away from the floods. It is insulting that the Minister does not recognise the services that council staff provide.
	It is true that, technically, the order caps councils that breach a 5 per cent. threshold for council tax increases, yet the tax in Hambleton district council is among the lowest in the country. Will the Minister confirm that the rule setting the 5 per cent. threshold was published after the process for setting the council tax was in place for the current tax year? Is that fair? Is that due process? Could not that be challenged in law?
	Rebilling will cost 50,000. How does the Minister envisage that that will take place? In its view, the council is being penalised for having an historically low council tax, a policy that it intends to maintain into the future. It intends to force a solution to deal with excessive taxation, as my right hon. Friend described. Any cash increase on a low council tax base is bound to be higher in percentage terms than in other authorities that have higher council tax bases than Hambleton. The Minister designated the lowest district council tax, including parishes, for 200405, and Hambleton district council is the third lowest in 200506. That position will not change after the capping order, but the effect of capping will be to destroy the prudent financial management that has delivered excellent services at low cost, resulting in a 40 per cent. cut in budget over 10 years. It will leave the council financially non-viable.
	The Minister will create a situation that requires a massive council tax increase in future for the council to remain viable, rather than the sustainable increase set out in the council's financial plans. Like my right hon. Friend, I urge the Minister to consider the implications of the message going out from the House this afternoon. It is perverse to penalise a prudent council that is providing excellent services and that has the third lowest council tax in the country. It is even more perverse to cap it in a year in which it has suffered its third severe flooding in less than five years. With his decision he has burdened the council with the additional cost of 50,000 to reverse the council tax bills. His policy of capping is inconsistent with previous Government commitments that local taxes should be determined, as my right hon. Friend said, by local councils. I urge the Minister to withdraw the order or the House to reject it.

Andrew Lansley: I am glad to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), who spoke on behalf of Hambleton district council. Their explanation of that council's circumstances illustrates the position of South Cambridegeshire. My right hon. Friend said that if the council proceeds in the way that the Government demands of it, in a few years it will have to choose between a large increase in council tax or a major reduction in services.
	In recent years South Cambridgeshire district council, with large reserves, chose to subsidise its council tax and keep it low. In the current financial year it had to choose between a substantial increase in council tax or a substantial reduction in services. After 2,500 responses from people across the district, the council decided that there should be an increase from 70 on band D council tax to 140, which the Minister will say is an excessive increase because it has doubled. Of course, however, the increase was proposed from a low base and a below-average shire district council tax. It was proposed after years of subsidising the council tax out of reserves.
	The only alternative, which the Government now seem set upon demanding of South Cambridgeshire district council, is a substantial reduction in services. As the Minister said, the Government proposed a 3.6 million reduction to the budget requirement. After receiving representations, they changed that to 2.6 million. However, we have the problem that budget requirement, as the Government calculate it, is not a measure of a council's spending year to year, but a measure derived after the use of balances.
	On the face of it, South Cambridgeshire's budget requirement went up from just over 9 million to nearly 14 million, but in reality the council proposed an 850,000 budget increase from 13.75 million, or a 6.2 per cent. increase. However, the order means that the Minister is effectively demanding that South Cambridgeshire's budget last year of 13.75 million should be reduced to 12 million this year. I cannot in my wildest imagination understand how a capping regime that is designed to reduce excessive spending can demand that a council reduces its expenditure year on year by 13 per cent.from 13.75 million to 12 million. That is an utterly perverse effect.
	The Minister knows that he has the discretion to change these things because he has already changed the proposal once. All my colleagues who are demanding that their councils should be permitted to make larger increases than 5.5 per cent. from their low council tax bases should take heart from the fact that the Minister has accepted that council tax in South Cambridgeshire should go up by a third, because that was the effect of the way in which the order was amended after the initial determination. I cannot take much comfort from that because although many arguments are made about the trivial nature of the Government's proposals for other authorities' budgets, the situation in South Cambridgeshire is not trivial. The order will lead to the existing service base being greatly reduced, so we are not talking about the ability to increase and improve services there, although we wish to do so.
	The Minister knows what those reductions will be. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York said, the Government might not admit to making assumptions about the consequences of the order, but they know those consequences. Although I shall not go through the whole list, they know that arts development grants will disappear in South Cambridgeshire, as will sports development grants. Community development expenditure will have to be curtailed. Such development is occurring in places such as Cambourne, which is a new settlement in my constituency, to try to accommodate the tens of thousands of new homes that South Cambridgeshire must have because the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has demanded it of us. Emergency planning will stop. Travellers' caravan sites could not be refurbished and improved, or provided. Building control regulations will have to be curbed, as will community safety and crime and disorder partnership activities. A whole string of activities, including statutory functions, will be affected.
	It is thus simply not true for the Government to say, as was claimed in the statement on 7 July, that the order is compatible with authorities being able to continue to maintain service levels and to deliver their statutory functions. If that were the case, it could be true in South Cambridgeshire only if there was a further substantial reduction in balances this year, meaning that there would be no room whatsoever for further council tax amelioration through transfers from balances next year. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks said, the Minister is proposing to throw the medium-term financial strategy of South Cambridgeshire district council out of the window, which is in complete contravention of the interests of my constituents and the residents of the council.
	It is absurd for the Minister to say that the Government are increasing support to local government across the board. We are debating the circumstances of individual authorities such as mine, which is a relatively low-spending authorityit is in the lowest quartile of expenditure. My authority sets a below-average council tax and that set by some other authorities is very low. However, the total external support for South Cambridgeshire has gone down by a third in the past decade. The revenue support grant for South Cambridgeshire is only 18 a head, which is 12 a head less than even the grant for Huntingdonshire, which is a low-spending authority that receives little external support.
	The Minister regards the proposed increase to South Cambridgeshire's budget as excessive, but it represents only an 850,000 increase in expenditure. The largest component of the increase is more than 500,000 to deal with the consequences of enforcement and legal action relating to Travellers in South Cambridgeshire. I will not dwell on this matter because we have debated it separately. My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and I have told the Minister's colleagues how necessary it is that South Cambridgeshire and other authorities have powers to ensure that planning laws relating to Travellers are upheld and that they receive the support of Government enforcement. However, that is simply not happening, which has the consequence of creating enormous additional cost. That was why two thirds of the proposed budget increase was precisely to meet enforcement costs relating to Travellers.
	Despite failing to support South Cambridgeshire in that respect, however, and having demanded that tens of thousands of additional homes are built in South Cambridgeshire, having failed to use the revenue support grant to provide any additional significant support to the authority, and having demanded that it cuts its budget, the Minister comes to the House with the argument that he is protecting the council tax payers of South Cambridgeshire. However, that argument has no support from me, the residents of South Cambridgeshire or my constituents. He is not protecting council tax payers, but proposing a complete absurdity. He knows that the proposal is completely arbitrary. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) was absolutely right to argue that we have ended up with crude, universal and arbitrary capping. Whatever the reserve powers on capping were intended to address, it was not these circumstances.
	The Minister would be wise to bear it in mind that he had to amend his initial proposal because it was clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, which was how I described it to him in my correspondence. However, he continues to propose something that is arbitrary and unreasonable. At the very least he should just say that South Cambridgeshire should not be required to reduce its budget below last year's figure of 13.75 million. That budget was not excessive then. It is not unreasonable to request that the council does not increase its budget year on year, but the Minister's demand that the budget should go down by 13 per cent. is arbitrary, unreasonable and unacceptable.

Alistair Burt: It has been a pleasure to participate in this stupendous debate. The Minister for Local Government made his case, not like Captain Ahab, but like Horatio holding the bridge with a bent rapier. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) made a consistent case on rate capping, and, although I do not necessarily agree with him, it would help him and us if he were to join us in the Lobby tonight. The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) made such a good speech that my wife paged me to say how impressed she was, although my wife agrees with me that she should send a copy of it to Councillor Neil Cliff, the Liberal Democrat leader on Mid Bedfordshire district council.
	Since then, a succession of living legends have systematically taken apart the Minister's case. There is no case.
	This has been a heady few weeks for the Government. First, confronting the dangers of global injustice, the Prime Minister took on the G8. Then, to put the European Union, which was going dangerously off-track, back on the rails, he took on the EU at the summit. Then, to prevent the danger of the Olympic games going to Paris, he took on the collective might of the International Olympic Committee, stepping in at the last moment. Yes, in the past few weeks, the Government have confronted the real dangers in modern life.
	Now we come to the apex: to confront the dangers posed to democracy and economic stability by Mid-Beds district council, the Government are proposing the order before us. I feel that, in the manner of a Soviet show trial, I shall have to stand here and admit the crimes of Mid-Beds district council, for which it has been punished by the Minister and the Government. I do so, of course, in shame and degradation.
	Led by Councillor Mrs. Tricia Turner, 53 local councillors attend to their work, working locally and diligently for local people. That is their first crime. Last year, the council had the audacity to offer the 10th lowest tax charged by any district council in England. Even after this year's increase, its local council tax would be the 16th lowest. It has alsothis is a real horror to confess to the Housereturned general fund balances to the council tax payer over the past two years. It has, I am ashamed to admit, identified 2.4 million in savings over the last three years, and a further 800,000 for next year, while making local decisions about the services required to respond to the needs of local citizens. I have to tell the Minister that there is a fifth column operating in his regional office, because the regional office of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister also thinks that Mid-Beds is a good council.
	Now we come to the crime passionel. In setting a budget for this year, Mid-Beds recognised that returning reserves to its citizens and trying to provide services worth 120 for 102 last year necessitated a rise this year, so as to head towards a balanced budget. The crime that I have to report to the House is that Mid-Beds had to propose a 1 per month increase in local tax.
	I understand how this must appear to officials and to the Treasury. Memos must have been winging their way across Whitehall stamped with the Churchillian mark, Action this day, to prevent such a crime from being committed. Of course, I dissemble to a degree, because I have only given the actual figure. If I give the percentage, it is, of course, as the Minister said, something like 13 per cent.but in real life, that means about 1 a month.
	What is it that really requires the Government to intervene? Is it Mid-Beds' desire to run local services locally and efficiently, and to take the inflation-busting decision to charge an extra 1 a week? And what is the impact? At first glance, the Government will require the council to reduce its budget by 341,000 to about 11,193,000, which would reduce band D council tax from the original 102 to 94.57a saving to the taxpayer of 7.61 per annum, or 15p a week. Worked out on an individual basis for all the residents in Mid-Beds, it means 3.7p a week being saved.
	However, the real effect will be greater. Councillor Max McMurdo sent me an e-mail yesterday. Max is an independent councillor representing Sandy. Indeed, he is a living legend in Sandy. If Max decided to stand for Parliament, I would have serious difficulties; he is a great man. His e-mail says:
	Having been a councillor for six years, I have voted for the 'Lean and Mean' approach that we have adopted, trickling reserves into the budget and looking for corporate savings wherever possible, to keep our Council Tax as low as possible. Last year we delivered our full range of services costing 120 at a Band D tax charge of only 102. We have now almost reduced our reserves to the prudent minimum and have been planning the future, to get back to a balanced budget, without the use of subsidy from reserves, by 2007. That is the very essence of prudent financial planning and is surely at the heart of good local government.
	It does mean, of course, that as we remove the subsidy each year the percentage increase is above inflation. Indeed it is inflation plus the amount of the withdrawn subsidy and this year our proposed increase was to be 13.3%, but this would still have left us with the 16th lowest District Council tax charge in England.
	To impose a cap, any cap, in percentage terms is a nonsense. Surely one must look at the actual tax charge to be levied. A percentage restriction can only be an attack on those Councils that have a low starting point, which surely points to the authority having a tight fiscal policy. If the explanation(s) for an increase above the Central Government target are sound, then, I suggest, good central government should gracefully accept them and approve the local decision.
	Surely the Government's goal is to control profligate councils?? Or am I being politically naive?
	Well, Max, I think that sadly, you probably arebecause your arguments are absolutely right and fundamentally sound, and if the Government had the good grace they would listen, and do something about them.
	The leader of the council and the chief executive have written a memo reminding local ratepayers that
	More and more responsibilities have been placed on Mid-Beds by the Government, with insufficient funding to support them. The Government grant to us this year did not even meet our inflation costs of over 1 million. This enforced capping will lead to very considerable cuts.

Alistair Burt: My hon. Friend makes a very fair point. I have described in the House in the past the ludicrous situation whereby the Government impose all sorts of different charges on local ratepayers, as well as councils, yet no blame or control seems to be attached to them. For example, multiple sclerosis therapy centres face an increase of 300 per cent. in the charges for inspection until 2008, imposed by the Government, who tell the Healthcare Commission that such inspections have to be fully funded by the centres. So there is no capping for the 300 per cent. increase for people who collect voluntarily for multiple sclerosis sufferers, whereas when there is an increase of 3.7p a week for individual residents of Mid-Beds, the Government step in to cap. I do not think that my hon. Friend or myself, or Patricia Turner or Max McMurdo, can explain that.
	This is not what capping was designed to doand here we come to the essence of the argument about capping. As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have been around for a long timewhich is the basis of my leadership bid. I was there in the 1980s when capping was first introduced; I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ken Baker in the Department of the Environment. We faced challenges from the Greater London council led by Ken Livingstone and Liverpool city council with Derek Hatton, when there was a clear aim on the part of local government to use its power and strength to challenge the elected Government of the day. Derek Hatton firmly believed that if the Government were induced to send in commissioners, the people of Liverpool would go out on the streets and rise up. That was part of the plan.
	I knew both Ken Livingstone and Liverpool city council. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Councillor Mrs. Turner is no Ken Livingstoneand Mid-Beds district council is no Liverpool city council of the 1980s.
	The cap is misused, out of proportion and demeaning to both central and local government. There is still time for the Minister to exercise his evident good sense, as well as good humour, and rip up his brief, turn to his officials and say, I can't do this; I won't do this. Local democracy and justice must override what the Government are telling me to do.

Philip Hammond: I have had three years as an Opposition spokesman on local government affairs, giving me plenty of opportunity to look at issues in their broader context alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles). Today, I can indulge myself in looking at this motion simply from the point of view of Runnymede borough council, my local council.
	This capping exercise defies common sense and smacks of political opportunism. Runnymede borough council is being capped in 200506 for imposing exactly the same percentage council tax increase that it imposed in 200405. Nobody looking objectively at how it runs its affairs could conclude other than that it is a well run, prudent council, which sensibly responds to the Government's decisions about changes in grant distribution.
	The truth is that, having set out policies for changing the distribution of local authority grants, the Government are now recoiling from the consequences of those policies in action. I shall set out some of the background to Runnymede's situation. Runnymede is historically a low-taxing authority. It is the lowest-taxing authority in Surrey and the eighth lowest in the country. At 117 this year, its band D council tax is 31 per cent. below the average for district councils.
	This year's increase, which the Government found so offensive, amounted to 34p a week. Overall, including the county and police precepts, Runnymede council tax payers faced a total increase of 4.93 per cent. in their council tax bills. Like colleagues, I have had virtually no complaintsa handfulfrom taxpayers about the increases. The Minister has received letters from the leaders of the Labour group and the Independent group on the council urging him not to cap Runnymede. I am pleased to say that there is no Liberal Democrat group.
	Runnymede council is an excellent authority, rated excellent in its financial management. It was credited with having
	credible strategies to meet future challenges.
	Its strategy now lies in tatters.
	Runnymede is also a popular council: in 2001 and in 2004, it was in the top 10 of all councils in England in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's residents general satisfaction survey. Part of the reason for that level of satisfaction is the non-statutory services that the council operatesday centres for the elderly, the yellow school bus transport scheme that contributes to a reduction in congestion, the community safety closed circuit television scheme, and an extensive programme of voluntary sector grants. Those are precisely the non-statutory services that will face the brunt of the cuts that the Minister is, in effect, imposing.
	In 2002, the then Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), announced a change in the way the grant system would operate. I remember going with other Members to a seminar that he held in Portcullis House, and he was quite open about what he was doing. He was redistributing local authority grant as delivered to councils, and he fully expected that some councils would have to raise their council tax in consequence. That accelerated an existing trend for Runnymede that had seen its formula grant drop 29 per cent. in real terms between 199596 and 200506. In per capita terms, Runnymede has had only a 0.4 per cent. money increase in formula grant since 199899. The Minister, of course, prefers to talk about individual years or the last three years, but what Runnymede and other prudent and sensible councils are doing is responding to a long-term trend of change in the way in which grant is distributed. After adjustment for changes in the benefit system, the real terms reduction from the 199596 figure in Runnymede's grant this year represents 2.18 million, and that is on a budget base of 8.5 million.
	The council faces considerable cost pressures, as all councils do. As a council in transition to lower grant, nor does it receive any effective grant recognition for the costs imposed by new legislation, particularly the cost of responding to waste recycling and environmental initiatives.
	Despite reservations about what the Government were doing to the grant system, Runnymede reacted as a prudent, well managed council would. It responded rationally, as the Government intended, and set out a clear plan to increase, over a period of five years, its council tax levels to something closer to the average. Ouroverwhelmingly Conservativecouncillors were willing to knuckle down and put into practice the agenda that the Government had dictated to councils that had had grant distributed away from them: it increased the council tax. The problem that Runnymede now has is that the Government lost their nerve when they saw the inevitable results of their own policy.
	Runnymede's strategy was to reduce revenue budgets by around 2 million over a period of time, to reduce its working balances to the minimum prudent level during the transitional phase, and to increase taxes to a level that would still be well below the district council average. Those were sensible, rational, medium-term responses to the changed environment in which it found itself. The ODPM was aware of that medium-term strategy, and Runnymede council believed that it had accepted it. Runnymede was not capped last year because the Government recognised explicitlywe have already heard the words of the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwichthe position in which low-taxing authorities found themselves and the absurdity of applying a percentage limit to a very low-taxing authority. Unfortunately, the Government have applied no such absolute criterion this year, so low-taxing authorities are caught by the same percentage criteria that would be applied to higher-taxing authorities.
	What is the point of extolling the virtues of medium-term financial planning by local authorities if the Government are going to move radically the goalposts from year to year so that a council with a medium-term strategy finds that it meets the ODPM's approval one year but falls outside the criteria that it has set down the following year? The Government are in an absurd position. They set out a policy of shifting grant away from certain types of local authorities in certain areas, which logically requires higher taxes. Now, they will not allow councils to increase their taxes to fill the void left by the shifting of grants, but there is no sign of their being prepared to change the grant formula back to return to councils such as Runnymede any of the grant support that they have lost.
	The Minister and his colleagues know that major service cuts are inevitable, yet they refuse point blank to explain how a local authority in Runnymede's position should respond to the situation in which it finds itself. This is bad government imposed for cynical pre-election political reasons. As a result, for a saving of just 7.23 a year14p a week after re-billing costspeople in Runnymede face service cuts totalling about 800,000 over the next couple of years. That will fall on the elderly who use day centres, communities who rely on CCTV security provision, and voluntary organisations that depend on the council's grant support programme. I am pleased to say that tomorrow Runnymede's Conservative councillors will each make a donation equivalent to their own personal savings as a result of the capping exercise to start a fund to make up the loss of grant for those local voluntary organisations. We hope that that will establish a local trend.
	This is a bad day for local government and for central Government, but I assure the Minister that it will also turn out to be a bad day politically for the Labour party, because nobody in Runnymede supports these cuts and the Government will reap the cost of what they have sown today.

Jonathan Djanogly: I concur with much of what my hon. Friends have said this afternoon.
	The Government's decision to cap the council tax of Huntingdonshire district council is nothing less than a travesty of what local government should be about. This debate has illustrated the senseless inability of this Labour Government to differentiate effective and inefficient or high-spending and low-spending councils, or even to understand the basic motivators of effective local government.
	Let me make it clear at the outset that no one says that Huntingdonshire district council is anything but well run. Indeed, it is one of the few councils in the east of England that the Government rate as excellent. It represents the sort of premier league council that the Government said only recently should be awarded greater freedomswords that now resemble some hollow joke. Rather than awarding more freedom, the Government are taking a sledgehammer to the council's carefully set plans and thereby undermining the concept of local democracy.
	Huntingdonshire should be congratulated rather than capped. It has delivered the Government's agenda for recycling targets, e-government, providing better local transport and regeneration. It has excelled in all those. Even with the increase in tax, the band D rate of 106.54 is the 19th lowest of the 238 districtsin the bottom 8 per cent. in the country.
	Earlier, the Minister said that the order was intended to prevent unreasonable increases. What is unreasonable? That has still not been explained to me today. It is bizarre to penalise the council simply because it has a higher percentage increase on a low historical base, when high-taxing, inefficient councils, which have increased council tax by more than Huntingdonshire district council, are ignored.
	Huntingdonshire's budget is set to increase by only 3.2 per cent. next year. That is well within the Government's target. However, because it has reduced the subsidy from its reserves this year when compared with last year, the increase in budget requirement becomes a figure that is caught by the capping regime. Capping therefore effectively forces the council to maintain a high council tax subsidy. That is simply not sustainable in practice and not honest to my constituents. The Government are forcing my local council to indulge in Mickey Mouse accounting.
	I shall explain my deeper fears for Huntingdonshire, its local government and the district's future development in one of the fastest growing populations and business environments in the country. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara), who cannot be here this afternoon, shares not only the district with me but my concerns that the Government are forcing us to build thousands more houses while not only withholding grant but capping a modest council tax increase. So much for joined-up thinking in government.
	Huntingdonshire has a low council tax, which reflects the council's careful and efficient management of resources and the significant amounts that are earned by investing its reserves following the transfer of its housing stock in 2000. The council is slowly spending those reserves on service improvements and they will reduce to a minimum in approximately 2011. As the council spends its reserves, its interest income reduces. Despite efficiency savings, which have happened, most of the balance will need to be made up by an increase in the council tax.
	With that in mind, the council sensibly decided to make the increase gradual12 a yearstarting in 200405 and continuing for five years. There was none of the stick-your-finger-in-the-air stuff on a yearly basis that happens with poor or deceitful councils. Huntingdonshire district council looked five years ahead and honestly told its residents what it needed to do to continue to provide a decent local service.
	That was a good example of efficient budgeting by officers and effective political leadership by the majority party councillors. They consulted widely and the majority party took the plan to the electorate in the all-up elections and received a thumping majorityand therefore an endorsement for their spending policies. Last year, the council was not capped, despite a similar increase in tax.
	The Minister is effectively telling me that he does not give two hoots for what my local council has done or planned, for what the local residentsmy constituentsthink or even for what the Government thought last year. He is sticking to a bizarre formula and ignoring reason. He shows contempt for local democracy.
	What is the effect of all that on Huntingdonshire? It means an average decrease of 6.82 a yearabout 13p a weekfor band D ratepayers. The cost of re-billing them is 60,000 of wasted taxpayers' money. I ask the Minister whether at least the re-billing can be postponed till next year to save that huge waste of money on administration costs. However, my main concern is that, unless the Government accept the poverty of their own argument, this problem will simply arise again in the future.
	In Huntingdonshire, this measure will ultimately result in service cuts of up to 5.6 million a year by 201112, which represents 22 per cent. of the council's planned net spending and a similar proportion of its staffing budget. And all this is happening at a time when the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is still withholding 750,000 a year of grant, which, by its own calculations, the council is due. It seems ridiculous to cap its council tax on top of that.
	I have expressed my concerns today, and I sincerely believe that the Government have got this very badly wrong. Capping is a blunt and wholly inappropriate measure for Huntingdonshire. I hope that the Minister will withdraw the order, but of course it is likely to be passed. In which case, I ask the Government to review their position, to ensure that this unfair and irrational situation is not repeated next year.

David Howarth: After this debate, the Government should go away and ask themselves what the purpose of capping is. We heard very little from the Minister about the point of this exercise. The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) said that the original point of capping was to ensure that local government could not challenge national economic policy. However, we are dealing here with 4 million out of a total local government expenditure of 80 billion, and national Government spending of five or six times that. The amounts that we are talking about are trivial.
	The hon. Gentleman was quite amusing about how trivial and pathetic this situation was, but it is more serious than that. Here we are in a place that used to legislate for half the world. Now it is reduced to telling Aylesbury Vale council what it can do with 4p per resident per week. How the mighty have fallen! The only reason that the Minister gave for capping these councils was that it was to protect council tax payers, but again we are talking about tiny amounts. Even in South Cambridgeshirewhere the sum involved amounts to almost half the figure that we are talking about todaythe cap will benefit local council tax payers by less than 1 a week. How an expensive re-billing exercise will protect local council tax payers is entirely beyond me.
	As many hon. Members have said, this is really about simple contempt for local democracy. If council tax payers in the areas concerned believe that these increases are beyond the paleor excessive, in the words of the Ministerthey will take the obvious route and vote out the councillors who brought in those levels of council tax. Given the amounts that we are talking about, it seems unlikely that that would happen, but that is their prerogative. The Minister said that members of the public had made their views known. I want to know how many of those members of the public there were, and how many of them voted in the most recent local government elections. One of the effects of capping seems to be to disempower local government, to give local voters less reason to vote, and to allow national Government to take over even the most trivial local decisions.
	I expected the Minister to say that one of the points of capping was to advance national policy in some way. However, we look in vain to discover which aspects of national policy would be advanced by this exercise. As hon. Members have said, three of the councils involved have been rated excellent in their comprehensive performance assessment rating. So how does capping those councils further the Government's policy to improve the local delivery of services?
	The measure is even undermining important national policies. In South Cambridgeshire, for example, an important growth area, cuts will be made in planning, community policing and in other new, important Government initiatives. Why is that? One reason, which the Government do not seem to understand, is that if a council leader is faced with having to reduce his budget, the one thing that he cannot do is cut existing programmes, as that involves making people redundant and adds to the cost, as savings cannot come from redundancies. He must therefore remove from the budget all the new programmes, a vast number of which have come from national initiatives. The Government are therefore undermining their own policies by capping such councils.

David Howarth: That is absolutely right, and many councils will be forced, because of the logic of the situation and the short time frame, to reduce expenditure by cutting grants to voluntary bodies. Certainly, that is the unfortunate position in South Cambridgeshire.
	The other aspect of national policy to which one might have expected a reference was the overall level of taxation. As the Minister said, however, the Government have succeeded in keeping the council tax rise across the country down to 4.1 per cent. As that goal seems to have been achieved, I cannot see the point of this exercise. He says that all local authorities have been in receipt of grant increases higher than RPII expected him to make that point. RPI is no measure of local government costs, however, especially for district councils, which have small budgets subject to wide variation. Most of their budgets are staff costs, and councils must compete with the private sector for professional staff. One cannot expect them to hold down salaries in a competitive situation in which if they did so they would lose their planners, lawyers and accountants.
	Another aspect of the problem, which Ministers do not seem to have taken into accountwhich brings me back to the point raised by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley)is that district councils often have to work together to provide services. South Cambridgeshire district council, for example, works together with Cambridge city council in relation to many of the voluntary bodies that it funds. One of the effects of the cap on South Cambridgeshire is to hit residents of neighbouring authoritiesthe citizens advice bureau in Cambridge will find itself 66,000 short, employment development grants will be 47,000 short, and there will be cuts in grants to homelessness organisations, the arts and community groups. All those groups are jointly funded between South Cambridgeshire district council and Cambridge city council. The pain that the Minister seems to intend for one council will therefore fall on the residents of a large number of councils.
	I must admit that for several years I had the dubious pleasure of being leader of Cambridge city council, South Cambridgeshire's neighbour. In many ways, South Cambridgeshire was an infuriating neighbour. It followed a financial strategy that I would never have followed. I thought that it could have used its reserves in a more constructive way. But that was the way that it chose to use its reserves, and it should be judged at the ballot box, not by the Minister.
	If national policy goals are not the reason for the Government's policy, what is? There might be one last reason: pour encourager les autresto pick on a few small councils, and to bully them as a warning to others. The sheer arbitrariness of what is happening is an advantage from that point of view. When the Minister was trying to explain why the criteria had changed, and why councils that are capped this year would not have been capped last year, or are having their budgets reduced from last year's levels, he referred to councils being allowed to second-guess. In other words, they would know what the rules were, and the Minister cannot allow councils to know what the rules are. That is extraordinary, and, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) pointed out, it is an abuse of power. It is a refusal to treat local authorities as rational beings, rather than as objects of manipulation. There is no chance of a stable constitutional settlement between central and local government on the basis of such manipulation. It is the ultimate in centralisation.
	The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister seems to be treating councils as unruly circus animals that must be induced to perform tricks. It is disgusting to watch, and should not be the basis of a mature democracy. The House should reject this contemptible order, and look to a democratic system of local government and a fair system of local government finance to restore the proper balance between local and national Government.

Philip Hollobone: About 20 per cent. of my constituents live in the Daventry district council area, and they are extremely concerned about the order. I also speak on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), who unfortunately cannot be with us but who has written to the Minister expressing his concern, and has met him recently.
	Within the Daventry district part of the Kettering constituency lies the battlefield of Naseby, where in 1645 the forces of Parliament overcame an over-mighty Executive. I invite the Minister to travel up to Naseby for a re-enactment of the battle. I am sure that members of the district council would be willing to take him on with me, and teach the Executive a lesson 460 years later.
	The order is particularly absurd in the case of Daventry district council. The Government wish to limit the council's budget to 7.8 million, and to reduce the band D requirement from 109.62 to 102.41, which would save 200,000. That is the equivalent of 14p a week, or 7.20 a year. For 14p I could not even buy half a copy of the Daventry Express, the local weekly, or half a copy of the daily Chronicle and Echo, which local residents read.
	As other speakers have said, Daventry district council would not have been caught out under past capping regimes. It spends 412,000 less than the formula spending share guidelines, and is well into the bottom half of the league table of total council tax bills. One of the effects of the order is to disrupt the long-term financial planning that the Government require of local authorities. They require authorities' medium-term financial strategies with projections of at least four years.
	The Daventry Express quotes council leader Chris Millar, one of the most exceptional council leaders in the country. He said:
	It's scandalous that the Government is able to undermine our ability to develop and implement robust services and long-term financial planning . . . the Government is effectively dictating future local service cuts which is an affront to local democracy.
	In short, the Government want to micro-manage some of the very best local authorities in the country, which means that there will indeed be a severe impact on local services. Council leader Chris Millar also said:
	There will be a long-term negative impact on services.
	That will be a direct result of the Government's action.
	As was pointed out earlier, there has been no regulatory impact assessment, and the Government have admitted that they cannot make assumptions about which local services and activities may be affected. So they are prepared to cap authorities' revenue budgets, but they shrug their shoulders when it comes to the damaging effect on the services provided to local people. Although this is obviously a party political attack on Conservative-controlled local authorities, so far as Daventry district council is concerned, there has been cross-party condemnation of the Government's actions.
	Two issues perhaps affect Daventry rather more than some other authorities mentioned, the first being negative housing subsidy and the associated transitional recovery scheme, which the Government have approved. I submitted a written parliamentary question to the Minister, to which he was good enough to respond, saying that the order does not affect the authority's entitlement to benefit from the transitional measures under this scheme. That is certainly not the local authority's understanding, and I should welcome the Minister's confirming whether the negative housing subsidy and the transitional recovery arrangements have indeed been fully taken into account in applying this order.
	Daventry district council wanted to increase its council tax by 13.6 per cent., which is an increase in cash terms of 13.12 a year. Some 10 of that10.4 per cent.is in accordance with the transitional recovery arrangements that apply to the negative housing subsidy. These arrangements have been approved by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and yet, because the authority has now been capped, it will no longer be able to recover the amounts it was previously promised. The council says that, to judge by the full implications of this order, by 200910 it could well have a cumulative deficit of 1.9 million, which will place it in an extremely perilous position. Councillor Christopher Millar says:
	The time has come to say enough is enough. If the Government are serious about devolving powers and responsibilities to local communities as part of their
	supposed
	localism agenda, then they need to stop playing 'silly politics' such as happened in this instance,
	by which he means this order. Our spending so much time debating these ridiculous orders and micro-managing well-run local authorities does not enhance the image of the Government or of local government.
	The most absurd aspect of this order is the Government's forcing Daventry district council to re-bill local residents. The Government want to save 198,000, but the cost of re-billing will be 100,000, so half the benefit will be lost. It might well go to the Post Office through the extra postage spent; however, there will be no benefit to local residents. When the Minister winds up, I hope that he will explain why, if local authorities such as Daventry district council are to be penalised by this order, arrangements cannot be made for the saving in grant to be carried forward to the next year to avoid the cost of re-billing, instead of imposing this additional requirement.

Nadine Dorries: My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and I share the same district council, Mid Bedfordshire, and he has already done an excellent job in fighting our corner. The House can imagine how I feel, as a new Member of Parliament, attempting to follow the experienced and knowledgeable defence that he presented.
	It is important to highlight the excellent value that the Conservative-controlled Mid Bedfordshire council provides for its council tax payers. It is efficient, well run, locally responsive and successful. It is a low-spending authority, with band D council tax bills well below the national averagethey are the 16th lowest in the country, and the lowest in Bedfordshire. Government inspectors who visited the council praised it for its robust financial planning and awarded it three marks out of four for financial prudence, but it appears that this Government choose to ignore their own inspectors when it is a matter of political convenience. Let me explain what I mean by political convenience: there is not one Labour councillor on the Mid Bedfordshire district council. That does not mean that the council has done anything other than attempt at all times to work with the Government and all their many impositions and directives, despite the fact that they have unnecessarily burdened the council both financially and in terms of morale.
	The council, its political leadership and officers have always been committed to delivering genuine efficiency savings. For example, over the past three years, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire has said, the council has made savings worth approximately 2.4 million, ahead of the saving requirements expected by Gershon. The council has also identified further savings of 809,000 to be achieved in 2005, with additional targets included for future years. It is always sensitive to Government concerns. Only this year, it has used almost 500,000 of balances to cushion the increase in council tax.
	Despite all that hard work and officially endorsed excellent management, Mid Bedfordshire council finds itself being treated like a reckless and irresponsible local authority. People might think that professional, well run Mid Bedfordshire council, commended by Government inspectors for its financial management, was the equivalent of the Labour-run Liverpool city council in the 1980s. The council is and always has been committed to securing value for money for local taxpayers and is actively delivering high-value and well-received services.
	It is not just in prudent financial management that Mid Bedfordshire has proven its worth. There are many other areas where it is improving the quality of life for local people. It has taken environmental issues head on. For example, consistent with Government targets, its waste collection service has increased recycling from just 6 to 32 per cent. in just 18 months. How efficient is that? It has thereby reduced the amount of residual waste ending up as landfill. It is indeed an efficient council.
	This is a practical statement of an efficient council, working in partnership with local residents to improve the environment and delivering on central Government targets. The council has worked hand in hand with the Government and has bent over backwards to satisfy the Government's whims and wishes in every way possible. As the Minister is aware, Mid Bedfordshire is recognised by the Government office for the east of England as a leading council. It has secured regional centre of excellence funding.
	To cap a council that is recognised as a good one, that has set its council tax rate for band D at 102, that is in the bottom 10 per cent. of all taxing councils, that has the 16th lowest rate in the country and the lowest in the county, and whose real-terms increases equate to an increase of 1 a month or 23p a week per resident represents Government interference gone mad. It is an affront to democracy. It is demoralising and distressing to those who have been elected by the people to run the council and those who work for it. Why? Because of the capping injustice, the council must spend 85,000 to refund each resident just 14p a week. For that reason, I consider the Government's decision to cap Mid Bedfordshire district council wholly disproportionate, perverse and draconian. Whatever happened to common sense, Mr. Deputy Speaker?
	As a new Member of Parliament, I receive many letters and e-mails from constituents, as well as visits to my surgeries. To date, I have not received a single representation that expresses concern about having to pay an extra 23p a week. In fact, the Minister made a point of saying that he had a file brimful of letters. When we challenged him, he indicated that those letters were on the Bench. Can we see them? Can we see that file brimful of letters that you have had from people, complaining about this issue? Where are they from?
	I should like to give Ministers the benefit of the doubt. I want to help you out. I do not think that you fully appreciate or recognise the context in which Mid Bedfordshire operates. We all know that you are a very busy Governmentin fact, there are far fewer of you today, which is probably why. You have a tendency to become bogged down by statistics. You have probably seen the percentage increase and think that it is high. We can forgive you this, as you obviously do not understand the historically low base from which the increases is being made. How can you on the Government Benches expect council officers to work and give you their all when they are rewarded in such a humiliating way?
	As my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire already stated, Tricia Turner, the council leader is no Derek Hatton. In fact, she and her councillors are the embodiment of professionalism and diligence. They are the foot soldiers of our society and the community. I beg you to reconsider, because your decision is far reaching and damaging.
	Let me explain why the baseline is artificially low and why the Government have made a mistakea big mistake. In recent years, Mid Bedfordshire district council, like other councils, has been reducing its revenue balances by returning money to the taxpayer; by doing that, reserves have been kept to a financially acceptable minimum of 2 million. As soon as balances have been used once, they cannot be used again, the outcome being that council tax has been kept artificially low, with the council's costs not reflected in the amount that they have taxed. The council has been moving its council tax closer to the actual costs of delivering the range of services it provides, with the aim of bringing council tax and spending commitments into line by 2007. That makes Mid Bedfordshire a model council.
	Hon. Members will recall a speech made earlier this month by the Minister of Communities and Local Government to the Local Government Association conference in Harrogate. He said:
	It is not sensible for government to micro-manage.
	Perhaps he can explain what terminology he would use to describe a council being instructed by central Government to incur 85,000 in costs to return 14p a week to residents. That, Minister, is micro-management, and someone in such a senior position should understand that. Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, chairman of the LGA, has described the Government's capping proposals as centralised stupidity. Now that is a man who knows his terminology. I imagine that hon. Members on both sides of the House are inclined to agree with himor perhaps not, given that all the councils being capped are Conservative, despite the fact that Conservative councils in England cost less and deliver better public services, charging 74 a year less on band D properties.
	I should also mention that the eight capped authorities received a mere 12 per cent. increase in funding this year, whereas SedgefieldI wonder who the MP for that constituency isreceived a staggering 68 per cent. increase. As the Minister of Communities and Local Government said to the LGA:
	The centralisation of power . . . is both a symptom and a cause of voter dissatisfaction.
	If Mid Bedfordshire district council did not perform well, the voters would have voted it out. They did not.
	Please pay heed to your own wordslook a little closer at what you are doing

Phil Woolas: I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would allow me to complete my general points, as I have limited time.
	There has been a complaint that councils with a low council tax base are being punished. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) said that authorities with a low council tax base should be exempt from any capping regime. There is a twofold argument against that. If we take the average as the benchmark and consider councils whose council tax has historically fallen below that level, we would quickly find that a Government of any colour would face an increase in the average. Rises would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Experience of local government finance in the past 30 to 40 years shows that that is the case.
	Another theme of our debate is the accusation that the Government have failed to listen. I am genuinely sorry if that impression has been given. We have made changes, in particular in response to the representations from South Cambridgeshire and elsewhere. If the House does not accept my assurances, I remind hon. Members that we have a legal obligation, which can be subject to challenges in the courts, to show that we have indeed taken those points into account. It is not the prime purpose of the legislation, but I am also under an obligation to take into account the 98 per cent. of authorities that have not made excessive increases in their expenditure budgets or council taxes. Many of those authorities face similar problems to councils mentioned in today's debate, including the negative housing subsidy to which the hon. Members for Brentwood and Ongar and for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) referred. It is reasonable that the Secretary of State should take such matters into account.
	Arguably, the very fact that we are talking about small amounts and a small number of local authorities shows that although capping is regrettableour policy of using capping only as a last resort has failed in this respectit has nevertheless secured the lowest level of council tax increases across the country for a number of years. Given the 12.9 per cent. of previous years, we cannot dismiss the 4.1 per cent. achieved this year. As for the accusation that the order is politically motivated, when I was first briefed on the issue and saw the word Sedgemoor the colour drained from my cheeks, as I genuinely believed that it was the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I faced the daunting prospect of meeting not just a former leader of the Conservative partyeveryone would regard the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) as a formidable advocateand his local authority, but my right hon. Friend. That is not sustainable. As further evidence, I remind the House of what happened last year in a similar debate, when Nottingham city councilnot exactly a bastion of the blue rinse Conservative partywas facing a similar problem. I give the assurances requested in that regard.
	The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), speaking on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, said that she would not support any capping regime. Will she then desist from blaming the Government, as she does constantly, when council taxes rise above the level of inflation? When there was no council tax regime three or four years ago, the Liberal Democrats were the first and the strongest to condemn not the local councils that put up council tax above the rate of inflationincluding my own, which was Liberal Democrat-run at the timebut the Government. She cannot have her cake and eat it. It is consistent for her to say that she opposes a capping regime of any kind, but it is not consistent for her opportunistically to use people who she says are suffering disproportionately from council tax increases and to hang that around the neck of the Government.

Phil Woolas: I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes. I guarantee the House that were the Government to pursue that policy and use the Lyons review to decentralise the national non-domestic rate, as she suggests, without applying a form of capping regime or an inflation limit to that non-domestic rate, we would be back here in two or three years and she would be blaming the Government for imposing excessive taxes on businesses and her constituents. If she will give me a guarantee that that will not happen, I will guarantee to consider her proposal more seriously.
	Let me respond to some of the other points that were made. I shall try to answer the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge if I can. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, who spoke on behalf of the official Opposition, did not say that his party was opposed to any capping regime. He said that it was opposed to capping regimes that hit only the lower council tax base local authorities. As he claims that Conservative councils are the more efficient authorities with a lower council tax base, is he not saying that he would accept a capping regime as long as it did not apply to Labour authorities? Is he not therefore hoist on his own petard and guilty of what he falsely accuses me of doing?

Ivan Lewis: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Third time.
	The aim of the Bill, as I am sure hon. Members already know, is to extend the full protection of Financial Services Authority regulation to consumers purchasing home reversion plans and ijara sharia-compliant home finance products. That will help people to make informed choices about what may be the most significant financial decision that they make and ensure that there is a level regulatory playing field in the equity release market, much of which already falls within the FSA's remit.
	I am grateful to Opposition Members for constructive debate in Committee and for their continuing support for this useful and important measure. Indeed, the Bill may have gone through its various stages at record speed, although I do not want to tempt fate.
	As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) pointed out in Committee, it is when there is unanimous support for a Bill's objectives that it is perhaps most important that proper scrutiny of its detail should take place. important. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), who is not present this afternoon, on ensuring that scrutiny took place constructively and effectively. I should also like to place on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Caton) for so ably steering our scrutiny of the measure in Committee. I think it was the first time he had performed that role and we were all grateful for the efficient and effective way in which he did so.
	Our deliberations in Committee focused on two main points: first, whether a de minimis limit should be applied to regulation, and secondly, the need for continuing parliamentary scrutiny of the costs of regulation.
	I hope that I was able to assure the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster that the Government had considered the de minimis threshold carefully when drawing up the Bill. Indeed, we included a specific question on whether a de minimis limit was appropriate in our public consultation. As I made clear in Committee, the Government do not believe that it is appropriate to set a de minimis threshold for the regulation of home reversion plans and ijara home finance products because of the risk that less scrupulous providers might exploit it by offering multiple loans just under the de minimis threshold to the same borrower. The risks to the consumer of cumulative borrowing would be no different from those attached to a single plan for more than 50,000. We also believe that that could create a potential distortion in the market. The view received unanimous support in the consultation.
	The respondents to the consultation included a wide spread of home reversion providers, industry representative bodies, not-for-profit organisations and consumer representatives.
	The second issue is the proper and appropriate scrutiny of costs. The debate in Committee focused on this issue, particularly in relation to regulation in this area, in order to ensure that the costs remain proportionate. I made it clear to the Committee that ensuring proportionality of regulation is hard-wired to the DNA of the Financial Services Authority. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 obliges the FSA to ensure that regulation for which it is responsible is proportionate and takes into account the effects on competition, innovation and international competitiveness. Should the Bill pass successfully through Parliament, the FSA will consult publicly on the detailed rules that it intends to apply to home reversion plans and ijara home finance products. Included in the consultation will be a full cost-benefit analysis.
	Furthermore, the FSA is already accountable to Parliament on an annual basis. Its annual report is subject to parliamentary scrutiny and must set out how the authority has met its statutory objectives and principles of good regulation throughout each year. Those principles include the requirement always to ensure that the costs of regulation are proportionate. I was therefore able to reassure the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster that the proposed amendment requiring additional impact assessments was unnecessary and would simply create an additional burden for industry, without providing any clear benefit.

Ivan Lewis: As we develop our better regulation agenda, we consider the lessons to be learned from the global marketplace. Where there is a case of regulation being done better and more effectively, we should of course take account of it. However, it is important to place on record the fact that, in any international dialogue about best practice in regard to financial services, the FSA comes out very positively indeed in any analysis.
	The point that I have been making since I got this job is that it is not inconsistent to say that, while the FSA is an excellent example of best practice in regulation, there is always room for improvement and always room to work with the industry to consider better regulation, both in terms of domestic regulatory measures and in terms of those that emanate from the European Union. In this country, the FSA, the Government and the industry have been quite successful in ensuring that the financial services regulations that emanate from the European Union are consistent with many of the principles that we want to see applied in terms of proportionality and best practice. That does not mean that we always win the argument, but I think most people would accept that, largely as a result of the respect that the FSA commands, we have been able significantly to influence the agenda relating to the regulations for the financial services sector that come from the European Union.
	To respond further to the hon. Gentleman, we are keen to look at the regulatory bodies in the United States, as well as globally, in terms of achieving a level playing field in the regulation of the financial services sector. That is not easy to achieve, and there is an argument that liberalisation and the opening up of the market should be the greatest priorities for financial services. However, we certainly want to see an increased emphasis not only on internal regulatory systems within the European Union but on looking outwards to our relationships with the United States and with the emerging economies of India, China and elsewhere.
	The better regulation agenda needs to be considered domestically, as well as from a European Union point of view. It also needs to be considered in the context of the global market and the global economy. We are rightly proud of the leading role that Britain plays in that regard. There is always a difficult balance to be struck: we must protect the interests of consumers but not stifle the innovation of business, particularly in the financial services sector. We know the tremendous contribution that the sector makes to the success of the British economy, and long may it continue. I therefore hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured by my response to his extremely interesting question, about which I may speak to him on another occasion.
	The issue of the costs of regulation, which has been raised by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) previously, has been the subject of some discussion. It is important to know that the costings in the published regulatory impact assessment remain estimates, as I have said before. They are derived from figures published by the FSA in relation to the existing mortgage regime, and are based on future projections of market size, which have left considerable room for dynamic market growth. In addition, the precise nature of the regime that will apply to home reversion plans and ijara products will not be finalised until the FSA has consulted on its detailed rules. As it is statutorily obliged to do, the FSA will issue a detailed cost-benefit analysis alongside its consultation on the detailed rules. That CBA will enable us to further refine the costings in our RIA currently, and it is possible that in the wake of a more detailed market analysis and definition of a tailored FSA regime, the projected costs of regulation will fall.
	While there is always cost to regulationto be fair, hon. Members on both sides of the House have accepted that in this contextit is important to remember that in this case the industry is willing to bear that cost, because of the benefits that it believes it will bring to the home reversion market in terms of improved consumer confidence. In the industry's view, that will allow the reversion market to continue its dynamic growth. A deeper and more liquid market in these products should in turn create new opportunities for market entrants. I would therefore encourage Members not to see regulation in this case as purely a deadweight cost to industry, because it clearly has potential benefits and can reduce reputational risks for lenders. I therefore remain convinced that, on balance, the benefits of regulation, both in terms of consumer protection and in terms of securing the confidence necessary for future market growth, outweigh the projected costs.
	Having briefly outlined our discussions in Committee, let me conclude by reaffirming that the Government believe that this Bill will benefit both consumers and providers of home reversion plans and ijara home finance products. Regulation, as facilitated by the Bill, will help people to make informed choices when purchasing such products and offer valuable consumer protection in the event of any mis-selling. It will also ensure a level regulatory playing field in the equity release market and should generate the increased consumer confidence that is essential if this market is to continue to grow.
	On that basis, I would ask Members to support the Bill. I commend it to the House.

Ivan Lewis: I accept your wise counsel, as ever, Madam Deputy Speaker; but, seriously, I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster for his constructive approach to what is a consensual Bill.
	The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) raised a reasonable issue about property investment clubs. When he spoke about the glossy leaflets offering obscure information, strange telephone numbers and dodgy advice that were being delivered, it brought to mind the Focus leaflets that are distributed in many of our constituenciesbut I will not go there, Madam Deputy Speaker, in view of the advice that you have given to me.
	On a serious point, the FSA is considering the concerns about those property investment clubs and will, of course, take appropriate action, if necessary, and advise Ministers accordingly.
	I want to respond to the hon. Gentleman's comments on ijara products generally and the danger of unintended consequences. Obviously, I do not ignore his concerns, but it is important to say that those schemes are legal and already in use. In those circumstances, the FSA regulations will ensure that consumers benefit from full and clear advice. Despite the danger of unintended consequences, that is undoubtedly a significant step forward, although we will keep an eye on the concerns that he has expressed.
	The hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) tends to move about during debateshe was nearly called twice on one occasion recently, as a consequence of such a manoeuvre. He referred to the FSA. It is important that we are clear about the fact that this is not a complex issue: the FSA is regarded globally as a world leader, but does that mean that it is perfect or that it need not engage in the Government's better regulation agenda, as other regulators must do? Of course, it does not mean that.
	Do we accept that there is always a concern in any organisation that the principles and objectives articulated at the most senior level do not always play further down the organisation in terms of day-to-day interactions? That is a genuine, authentic concern. The management of any significant organisation of any nature, whether in the public sector or the private sector, must have regard for that concern. It is important that the objectives and principles that apply in respect of that organisation's leadership are also reflected in the day-to-day dealings between the regulator and those who are regulated.
	The hon. Gentleman's overall point was about those in the financial services choosing to invest in this country. The FSA has arguably contributed to the fact that the financial services sector continues to regard this country as almost the best place in which to do business. Far from detracting from that, the fact that we have leading regulatory practice in the financial services sector makes this country a very attractive place to do business. Yes, we need to continue to ensure that the better regulation agenda applies. We do not want to be smug or complacent because the FSA has rightly earned global respect. Equally, we do not want to face false and bogus choices. We should not suggest that, on one hand, the FSA is somehow not doing its job in the most effective manner possible, while on the other, not recognising the fact that we must achieve the right balance between consumer protection and not stifling innovation and enterprise in the financial services sector. Thus far, the FSA has maintained that balance reasonably well, and we should support the work that it does.
	The FSA does a lot of important work on behalf of this country in responding to regulations emanating from the European Union. Our partnership with the FSA is important in that respect because much of the regulation in the financial services sector flows from the EU rather than from domestic legislation. It is extremely important that the Government and the FSA have a constructive relationship in ensuring that this country's vision of an appropriate landscape for financial services regulation is the one that prevails in any argument that arises, not only at EU level, but in the international or global economy.
	Now that I have responded to the points made during the debate, let me say a little about why the Bill is important and why putting it on the statute book is justified. We believe that its provisions will help people to make informed choices, offer valuable consumer protection and ensure that there is a level playing field in the equity release market, most of which already falls within the scope of FSA mortgage regulation.
	FSA regulation will extend valuable consumer protections to elderly consumers when they are making one of the most important financial decisions that they are likely to takea point that has not been mentioned in the debate. It will ensure that Muslim consumers are able to access all elements of the growing market in sharia-compliant home finance products while benefiting from the protections afforded by FSA regulation. It will also help people to make informed choices about the home finance products they purchase, create a level regulatory playing field in the equity release market and, by helping to improve consumer confidence in such products, facilitate future market growth. On that basis, I am pleased to commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

Fraser Kemp: I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to speak in our summer Adjournment debate, not least because for the past four years I have been subject to an enforced, but enjoyable, silence in the Government Whips Office.
	Today, I shall highlight some issues affecting my constituency and the wider city to which it belongs. That city is also ably represented by my hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland, North (Bill Etherington), for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) and for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson). I shall also take the opportunity to promote the city of Sunderland and Wearside in general and to tell the House about a dynamic city which has transformed itself in recent years.
	Last month, Sunderland launched a major marketing campaign asking people to see the city in a new light. Much of the credit for the city's transformation in the past 20 years goes to the leader of the city council, Bob Symonds. Twenty years ago, we were facing the closure of our mining industry and the decline of shipbuilding, but we have moved from a position of decline and managing decline to one of managing progress. That is a big difference. A few decades ago, it would have stretched credulity to say that Sunderland could be one of the UK's great places for inward investmentpeople would not have believed it. Now, however, we have achieved astonishing change, both economically and culturally.
	Sunderland, I remind hon. Members, is the biggest city between Leeds and Edinburgha fact that is often forgotten. There was bad news at Longbridge earlier in the year, but the city plays host to the most successful car plant in Europe. This week, the workers at Nissan learned not only that they are the most productive workers in Europe but that their plant is more productive than any plant in the United States. Time and again in recent years Nissan has demonstrated its ability to win contracts to build new models, so I pay tribute to the managing director, Colin Dodge, and the work force. On behalf of the work force and the company I thank the Government for their support for research and development, which has ensured that those models are built in the UK. If anyone wants to drive a truly British car they can, in a Nissan.
	Young people in my constituency have achieved much. Again, there has been a big transformation. I am proud to report that with the creation of children's centres, the opening of seven new primary schools in the past eight years, and the building of three new secondary schools in the next few years, we can offer full wraparound education. A great deal of investment has gone into education, which is making a difference in any area that has suffered from underachievement by many young people. Wearside was chosen last year as one of the top five places for business investment by leading accountants KPMG. To reinforce that choice, the area accounts for 12.5 per cent. of the population of the northern region yet produces 25 per cent. of its gross domestic product.
	We are drawing up plans to ensure that we are the leading intelligence city within the UK. In my constituency, there are thousands of new jobs coming on stream at Rainton Bridge. We have invested in infrastructure, and are starting to see the benefits. Sunderland was recently included in the world's top seven IT-intelligent communities by world opinion leaders. The key to that success is not just the people in the area but the partnership between the public and private sectors. We have taken steps to make that happenwe are not just planning for today but making sure that we put plans in place for the next five, 10 and 15 years. It has always been necessary to plan for the future, and that has never been more so than in today's global economic environment. The old ways, the old rules and the old expectations about the economy do not apply any more.
	Those are the wider Wearside issues that I wanted to bring to the attention of the House, but I also think that a couple of local groups in the constituency are worthy of mention. The Square Root group, whose members are predominantly women, has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds in the past couple of years to transform a derelict eyesore at the heart of that former mining community of Herrington Burn into landscaped gardens and play facilities for children. It is a great example of people power, and an inspiration to many in my constituency, including me, showing what people can do to transform a derelict area. Wearside Women in Need, a dedicated organisation led by Clare Philpson, gives support to victims of domestic violence. It also undertakes imaginative work with domestic violence offenders. It has transformed and, in some cases, saved the lives of many families and individuals in desperate circumstances. A great deal more needs to be done, however, and I urge the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons to tell the Home Secretary that any additional resources that can be provided to tackle the scourge of domestic violence would make a good and positive contribution.
	It is easy for politicians to condemn young people and categorise them as yobs and so on but, equally, there are many shining examples, including young Grant Hollis, a pupil at Houghton Kepier school, who represents my constituency in the Youth Parliament. He does excellent work representing to me and the city council the views and aspirations of young people in the city.
	On local democracy, I urge the Minister, in consultation with others, to ensure that in next year's local council elections we have the opportunity to do what we have done for many yearsthat is, to vote by post. To the best of my knowledge there have been no problems with that in the city of Sunderland, and in many areas it has doubled the turnout. Anyone who believes in democracy and is a confirmed democrat must be encouraged so that we can double turnout.
	Those are some of the issues that I wanted to mention, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so. There has been a big transformation in the area, and I hope that the Minister will take on board the points that I have made.

David Heath: I always welcome the pre-Adjournment debate as a valuable opportunity for Back Benchers to raise issues. I am sorry that it is so abbreviated today and that we do not have enough time for all those who wish to be called. It is therefore not appropriate to take a panoramic view of the world and its problems in the short time available. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr. Kemp), who extolled the virtues of the city of Sunderland. I am pleased that he now has the chance to do so vocally, rather than being constrained by the office of Whip.
	I propose to use the opportunity unashamedly to raise matters in my constituency, and it would be inappropriate if I were to abuse my position on the Front Bench and take longer than the time allocated to Back Benchers, so I propose to stay within the limit. There are three issues of great importance to my constituency that I wish to raise. One is the still-awaited new Victoria hospital in Frome. I am getting increasingly worried that the hospital, which was promised back in 1998 and should have been completed years ago, is still so far from completionindeed, it is still a greenfield site. I am having a meeting on the subject with the local primary care trust next week, but I remind Ministers that if we do not get a satisfactory solution, I shall raise the matter after we return from the summer recess.
	Another problem is the A303a recurrent problem for local residents, both in safety terms and in traffic noise terms, particularly at this time of year, when the A303 carries an enormous amount of traffic bound for the south-west of England. However, I shall spend the bulk of my time on a very local issue, the water supply to the village of Witham Friary in my constituency. I do so for two reasons; first, because I have had a prolonged dialogue on the subject with the clerk to Witham Friary parish council, Deborah Ligatt, and with members of the parish council and other residents, and secondly, and to me equally importantly, because I live in Witham Friary, as do my family, and we are directly affected. I therefore have a direct interest, which I declare.
	We are unusual in that our water supply is provided by the Duke of Somerset's estate. It is a private water supply. It is not connected to the large water companies. Although in many ways that is a satisfactory arrangement, in other ways it is becoming less satisfactory, and increasingly so over recent years. We have had problems with the quality of supply because of contamination. We have a particular difficulty because there is a thin layer of greensand which provides the filter, with the result that there is often bacterial and other contamination of the supply. The other consequence is that the water is highly acidic, which means that it contains a lot of dissolved metalsiron and copper, and we hope not lead, but we have to be careful about old piping.
	The imminent difficulty is that the Environment Agency has applied a daily extraction limit of 193 cu m on the water supply, which theoretically is enough for our needs, but in practice, because of very substantial leakage from the old main, is far from adequate. As a result, there have been interruptions in supply for all the residents in the village. The interruptions have caused difficulty and inconvenience to those who need their domestic supply and could lead to public health problems. However, the situation is catastrophic for those who rely on the water supply for their agricultural undertakings. Dairy farmers around the village are finding it difficult to water their livestock due to the interruptions of supply.
	The estate is trying to rectify the problem. It has addressed the water quality by undertaking to replace the limestone bed of the reservoir and starting to fit alarm telemetry and automated systems. However, we have a real problem with supply. We need to replace the cast-iron main and the spurs from it. The alternative is to add water from the water companies to the supply, but Bristol Water has indicated that it would cost 400,000 for it to provide water to our supply. Such a proposition is completely beyond what would be reasonable for the Duke of Somerset's estate. Wessex Water simply says that it would be unable to provide additional water.
	The problem that we face is that no one seems to have any responsibility for maintaining water supply in the event of the failure of a private supply. I am not criticising the Duke of Somerset's estate because it has assiduously tried to find a solution. It has been helpful and has discussed the matter frequently with local residents. However, we are not only exasperated by the lack of progress, but worried about what could happen in the future. We have found no reference to an obligation to maintain supply through our research. The regulatory authorities enforce the requirement to maintain water quality for reasons of environmental health, but if a water supply fails, it appears that no one can take appropriate action. There is a big question about what will happen if the estate is unable to fund the new main that is needed, or if it is unwilling to do so. It is to the credit of the estate that it has given no indication that it will walk away from the water supply to the village, but who would stop it doing so? If it walked away, what would be the consequences for the village?
	A possible solution to the problem would be to drill an additional borehole. The parish council and my researchers have gone to various authorities to find out who could assist us, but we have been passed from Department to Department. We approached Ofwat, but it told us that we were classed as resale customers and that it had no responsibility for such customers. It suggested that we should examine our written agreements for water supply, but we have no such written agreements. The supply has been there since the year dot. We just get the water supplied from the reservoir up the hill, so there is no written agreement about the quantity or quality of the supply. Although the Environment Agency has regulatory functions to avoid contamination and prevent unnecessary extraction, it appears that it has no responsibility to maintain supply. Government Departments have no interest in the matter, so we are in a quandary about exactly what we can do to ensure that the villagealbeit a fairly small onedoes not eventually have no water. Most people would accept that that would be entirely unsatisfactory.
	A meeting is being held on 3 August to consider possible funding for a new borehole. Will the Minister take what I have said back to Ministers in the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and ask them what assistance they can give to us? I have already written to them, but this is a desperate matter for the people whom I represent and my neighbours, so I want to be able to help them.

Gavin Strang: Before the House adjourns for the recess, I ask hon. Members to consider the need for action to prevent nuclear proliferation, following the disastrous failure of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in New York two months ago.
	The NPT came into force 35 years ago and is built on three pillars: first, it prevents proliferation by stopping states that do not have nuclear weapons acquiring them, and by preventing states that already have nuclear weapons from acquiring more; secondly, it obliges states that have nuclear weapons to disarm; and thirdly, it enables nuclear technology to be used peacefully.
	The NPT is subject to a review conference every five years. The review conference in 2000 was widely viewed as a successit adopted a 13-step programme for the total elimination of the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapons states.
	If it was important to make progress in 2000, a quick glance at events since then tells us that it was crucial to make progress in 2005: in December 2003, Libya revealed that it had been working for years on a secret nuclear weapons programme; in January 2003, North Korea announced its withdrawal from the NPT; and in February 2005, North Korea announced that it had manufactured nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the International Atomic Energy Agency has found and declared uranium-enrichment activity in Iran and the AQ Khan trafficking network has been exposed. Despite some progress on disarmament, the UN has stated that the world contains approximately 27,000 nuclear weapons. World awareness of the importance of keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists has risen exponentially since the review conference in 2000.
	The non-proliferation treaty regimes have not kept pace with the world situation, and the conference on disarmament and the UN disarmament commission have both been fruitless for years. Against that background, one would have expected a degree of urgency as delegates met for the 2005 NPT review conference. It was an opportunity to put things back on track, to ensure that the tools that we have to prevent proliferation work, to impose disarmament and to enable peaceful nuclear technology that is fit for purpose, but that is not what happened. Nearly two thirds of the 26 days of the conference were taken up with deliberations over logisticsit took 10 days to agree an agenda. Rather than agreeing vital measures to strengthen the non-proliferation regime, the conference concluded with no substantive agreement whatsoever.
	The NPT was an agreement between the five states that already had nuclear weapons and the states that did not. The non-nuclear states pledged not to acquire nuclear weapons, in return for which the nuclear weapons states committed to disarming their nuclear weapons capabilities. The fact that that deal at the heart of the NPT remains unmet is an important part of the background to the difficulties encountered at the review conference in May. The nuclear weapons states are seen to be half-hearted about their side of the NPT bargain and to have resisted attempts to focus attention on their disarmament obligations.
	The current security climate has understandably led to calls for a tougher non-proliferation regime for non-nuclear weapons states. While we nuclear weapons states are perceived as disengaged from our side of the NPT deal, however, there is the danger that our insistence on non-proliferation will not carry adequate credibility with the non-nuclear states.
	The stalemate in New York was depressing and alarming in equal measure, but it did not detract from the importance of the NPT and the need to strengthen the NPT's mechanisms and operations. We must make progress in many areasseveral credible proposals have been suggested, and I shall briefly outline five of them.
	First, we must achieve the universal adoption of the IAEA's additional protocol, which is designed to ensure that states cannot divert fissile material to secret weapons programmes. In the parlance used in the field, the additional protocol must become the new standard for verifying compliance with non-proliferation commitments.
	Secondly, we should adopt the IAEA proposals for incentives for countries to forgo the development of fuel-cycle facilities. The supply of the necessary fuel for peaceful energy uses would be guaranteed, possibly with the IAEA as guarantor, in return for which states would pledge not to develop domestic uranium-enrichment or plutonium-separation capabilities.
	Thirdly, we must secure a fissile material cut-off treaty to halt the further production of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium, and I welcome the UK Government's pledge to work for progress in that field.
	Fourthly, we must see the early introduction of the comprehensive test ban treaty, pending which all countries must affirm their commitment to a moratorium on testing. To the Government's credit, the UK signed that treaty in 1998, but it can come into force only when all five nuclear weapons states, and all states with civil nuclear reactors, have signed. Eleven such states, including China and the United States, have still not made that commitment.
	Fifthly, disarmament is one of the three pillars of the non-proliferation treaty, and it is essential that progress be made on the elimination of all nuclear weapons, as agreed by the NPT states, including the UK, at the review conference in 2000.
	Before the House is due to return from the summer recess, there will be a meeting of Heads of State and Government and a high plenary level event at the UN General Assembly in New York in September. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has published a report for decision by the world's leaders at that summit, which makes key recommendations concerning all three pillars of the NPT. In this month's communiqu on non-proliferation, the G8 welcomed the attention given to that subject in the Secretary-General's report and declared themselves ready to engage actively at the September summit.
	I am glad that my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the Deputy Leader of the House, is replying to the debate, and I hope that he will convey this request to his colleagues in the Government: I urge the British Government to do all they can to secure a positive outcome for the people of this country and the world.

Michael Fallon: I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise three local issues that affect the quality of life in my constituency. They are not unique to my constituency; they probably affect all of us. Indeed, some of them have been raised before.
	The first is the planning system, and how it applies to Travellers, in particular, who want to develop encampments, especially in the green belt. My constituencyand, I am sure, the constituencies of many other hon. Membersis almost under siege from multiple applications by Travellers. The villages of Crockenhill, Swanley, Hextable, West Kingsdown, Knockholt and Halstead have been inundated with applications.
	The applications are not, in the most part, made by those who like to claim that they enjoy the itinerant lifestyle, in which they may be impoverished but are free to pursue their own way of life, moving on from site to site. In the main, when investigated, the applicants turn out to have formidable assets and bank accounts, and in many cases to own property in the constituency already. They are simply people who are trying to build on the green belt where farmland happens to be cheapprecisely because it is in the green belt, so people should not be able to build on itin an area with easy access to the motorway system.
	Our district councils seem almost defenceless now. When they rule against Travellers their decisions are often overturned by the Secretary of State on appeal. The cases are prolonged by legal posturing. Many of the applications are retrospective, and those applicants will do everything possible to prolong the determination process. Now we are told that they are covered by a definition of Travellers as some sort of special reserved minority group.
	I have raised that issue before, and I raised it specifically during business questions three or four weeks ago. I am sure that it is only an oversight that the natural courtesy of the Leader of the House and his deputy has not led to my receiving a reply. The Government have undertaken to review the planning system in relation to Travellers, and I asked when we would see the results of that review, and when we could expect the Government to come to the aid of district councils to protect our residents against those who simply want to abuse the normal planning procedures and the green belt.
	The second matter to which I want to draw the attention of the House is one that I find hard to describe. It is a related issue, concerning the subdivision and marketing of plots of farmland to the naive, who purchase them at very low cost under the mistaken impression that they may one day be able to obtain planning permission on them.
	There are two examples in my constituencya field opposite London road in the village of Dunton Green, and a field opposite Hale Oak road in the village of Sevenoaks Weald. Clearly, unscrupulous operators are marketing those plots to the naive, and I do not think that we can simply leave everything to the principle of caveat emptor. So far as I understand it, the only Government response has been to empower councils to serve article 4 notices direct on the land, so that anyone who visits the plot that they are about to purchase or considering purchasing will be aware that the district council is unlikely ever to grant planning permission on it. That is not enough. What happens now is that the plots, once bought, are staked out and sub-divided. Different entrances are created from the road into the field concerned, and before we know where we are local residents, instead of looking at a piece of farmland, look at what appears to be the start of a building site. It seems that the law needs updating, and, if the Minister cannot answer the point tonight, I should be grateful if he wrote to me.
	Finally, I want to raise railway stations. I have nine in my constituency, some of them major, such as Sevenoaks and Swanley, others smaller and well used to commute to London, and others smaller still and unmanned. A useful report published today by the National Audit Office looks at the condition of our railway stations, and I am speaking not of our major terminuses but of the ordinary, humdrum stations that each of us has in our constituencies. There are two issues.
	Unmanned stations seem rapidly to be disappearing into a state of disrepair and vandalism. The issue is: who is responsible for them? The length of the leases given to train-operating companies is clearly not sufficient for them to invest substantial sums in the upkeep and improvement of the security of stations. I am at a loss to understand who is responsible for that. Is it Network Rail, or the Strategic Rail Authority, or the Department of Transport? I should be grateful if the Deputy Leader commented on that.
	Related to that, and far more alarming, is the proposal by South Eastern Trains to de-manif that is the right wordsome of the stations that are manned at the moment. The proposal is to remove ticket office staff altogether and convert stations that were manned into unmanned stations. I must ask whether the House considers this the right time to be removing staff from stations. To whom are people supposed to report suspicious packages if there are no staff on the station? From whom can they seek assistance, particularly if they are women travelling alone at night who may need it? Again, an excellent report from the NAO, which I commend to the House, raises that issue of who is responsible for the upkeep and security of our railway station network, and I should be grateful if the Deputy Leader answered that point.

Jim Dowd: It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon). One of the issues that I want to raise relates entirely to the South Eastern Trains plan to reduce booking office hours and clerks across south-east London and Kent.
	Consultation recently concluded on that ludicrous proposal. As I understand it, it now resides with the Strategic Rail Authority to determine whether it should go ahead. Intriguingly, when South Eastern Trains notified the London transport users committee and the rail passengers committee for southern England of the proposals, it said:
	Should this go unchallenged, it will take effect.
	I do not know anybody who has written in support of those ludicrous proposals, whether from my constituency or the broader area. The company was, I think, being somewhat optimistic in imagining it would get away with its subterfuge.
	The reasons for the proposal elude everybodymy constituents and others. The chair of London transport users committee, Mr. Brian Cooke, said that it was
	one of the daftest proposals we have seen from a Train Operator.
	Mr. Mark Woodbridge, regional director of the regional passenger committee for southern England, said:
	The upside for passengers as a direct consequence of these proposals has not been demonstrated by SET. Passengers do not like stations unmanned, preferring the human touch, seeking help and advice when needed and having a perception that someone is in control
	the very point that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks made
	and looking after their welfare. Replacing people with machines is not the way forward as they do not offer the full range of tickets and cannot provide the human interface or advice that passengers demand.
	Machines cannot deal with such matters in these days of ever more complex fare structuresspecial offers, awaydays, Apex fares and so on.
	The hon. Member for Sevenoaks mentioned the absence of staff at railway stationsI think he said that it affects nine stations in his constituency. In my area, it affects Catford Bridge, Catford, Beckenham Hill, Bellingham and Lower Sydenham, which are in my constituency, and Penge East and Sydenham Hill, which, although just over my boundary, are used by many of my constituents. Even stations that are that close to central London will be abandoned for all but three hours a day. There will be no human presence therenobody to give advice or guidance, and no reassuring presence. They will become another part of the public realm that we leave at risk from those indulging in antisocial behaviour and that normal, decent, law-abiding citizens will feel unsafe in using.
	I hope that Members will consider early-day motion 447, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Gwyn Prosser), which details all these issues. Its 25 signatories cover every part of the London, south-east and Kent franchises. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will persuade the Strategic Rail Authority to throw these stupid proposals into the bin where they belong.
	The other issue that I wish to raise, as a London Member, is that of the Olympics coming to London in 2012. Hon. Members will be aware that we had been due to debate the London Olympics Bill today until the sad news on Sunday of the death of Sir Edward Heath. I never had a great deal to do with Sir Edward, but he was always immensely kind and considerate to me, as I am sure he was to everyone else who came across him. [Interruption.] Perhaps some Conservative Members do not share that view, but I will not pursue that.
	I pay tribute to all involved in the Olympic bid. It was a tragedynot as tragic as the events of 7 Julythat their great achievement in Singapore should so quickly have been diluted by the events of the following morning. They were disappointed not to get the homecoming that they deserved, but there are seven years between now and the games, and I am certain that we will see how they build on the progress that has been made so far.
	At the time of the announcement, I was regarded as something of a sceptic, as is proved by my response in Hansard to the statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport some 18 months ago. Since then, however, I, like millions of fellow-citizens, have been won over by the enthusiasm, imagination, innovation and sheer temerity, in some ways, of the bid put together by all those involved. Now, we need to work not only on providing the games but on ensuring the greatest possible benefit across the countryan enduring legacy, not only for London, after the games have gone in 2012. As a contribution to that, I suggest to the Department for Transport and/or Transport for London that when the Channel tunnel high-speed rail link comes through to St. Pancras, we should rename either St. Pancras or Stratford station, London Olympic. That would be rather like London Waterloo, in that it would endure for many years, long after the games are gone and forgotten.
	In conclusion, and on a more serious note, I seek the indulgence of the House in mentioning one of my constituents and an extremely good friendIain Hepplewhite. He is well known to many Labour Members, and others, and to many members of the Press Gallery. He was the parliamentary Labour party's press officer for many years and worked for the Deputy Prime Ministeras he then was notbefore going on to be head of press at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and head of communications at the Department of Trade and Industry. He then became head of communications at the Film Council. Less than six months ago, he was diagnosed with an especially aggressive and rapacious intestinal and stomach cancer. The treatment that he received was excellent but unavailing. Yesterday, he returned to his native north-east to be with his parents. He will be 39 next Sunday.
	In my experience, the House is a much more generous and sensitive place than some would have us believe. I hope that all hon. Members will join me in sending our very best wishes and thoughts to Iain and his family for whatever may lie ahead.

Ashok Kumar: I congratulate the hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) on making such a moving maiden speech. He talked about all the former Members of Parliament who reside in his constituencyhe will not be short of advice, that is for sure. May I say, as someone who is also of Indian descentI was born in India of Punjabi descent and I share the same cultural spirit as the hon. Gentlemanthat it is a great pleasure for me to follow him? I wish him many happy years in the House and I wish his constituents well. I am sure that he will serve them with great spirit.
	I want to use today's debate to highlight an aspect of competition law with which the Deputy Leader of the House might be familiar, given that he was previously a Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry. It concerns the Office of Fair Trading's recent consultation on newspaper and magazine distribution. This is a matter of concern to me and, I am sure, to other hon. Members.
	If I wanted a newspaper or a magazine, I would go to my local newsagent or a corner shop to purchase one. Alternatively, I could order one, be it the Financial Times, the Daily Sport, or whatever interested me. The reason that we are able to get such newspapers locally is that the present distribution system enables us to purchase them everywhere, from supermarkets to local newsagents. The local papers that serve my area, such as the Evening Gazette and The Northern Echo, have also benefited from the unique distribution arrangement.
	Let us take the Evening Gazette as an example. This paper, printed in Middlesbrough, goes to some 550 individual outlets across Teesside and parts of north Yorkshire. The vast majority of those are purely local and far removed from the high street. The editor of the Evening Gazette tells me that only 11.1 per cent. of that paper's sales come from copies purchased in the big supermarkets. The overwhelming majority of its sales come from local newsagents, convenience stores, service stations and corner shops.
	That arrangement is possible only because of a long-standing agreement between the publishers of the country's newspapers and magazines and a small number of distributors. The system works. Unlike most specialist retailers, newsagents have been a great success story. In 1995, there were 45,000 newsagents in the UK. There are now 54,000. Inevitably, however, the supermarket chains seem to want to crush this system, accusing it of being anti-competitive. They want to set up their own exclusive delivery system for magazines. They want a distribution system that would corner the lucrative mass market in the magazines that they sell.
	The OFT is examining this issue, although there is no trace whatever of any popular desire among the people of this country for change to the current system. At the moment, the demand from supermarkets is for liberalisation only in the sale of magazines. The existing big distributors, however, carry magazines and newspapers together. They are not separate entities living in separate marketsthey are both printed words on paper. They are distributed through a system that ensures equality of access. Breaking up that arrangement and allowing the supermarkets to stitch up exclusive deals with distribution firms of their own choosing will have devastating effects. It will mean that the costs for all remaining distributors will rise if they are left to supply only newspapers and a few magazines to local newsagents and corner shops. It will mean that the distribution of newsprint to small villages, small towns and small shops could no longer be subsidised by sales to high street giants and out-of-town superstores.
	I see that as a direct attack on the availability of news information and comment to the community. It will certainly affect my constituency, which consists of small towns, villages and outlying estates. All of those are served by thriving newsagents and good entrepreneurs in small shopkeepers. I wonder whether a newsprint distribution system will be willing to incur the costs of delivery to some of the small settlements in my constituency. How will they be able to take a small number of papers to tiny pockets of villages such as Skinningrove, Charltons or Carlin How if they cannot be supported by bulk sales to a supermarket? At that point, distributors might start to demand delivery charges, which most small shopkeepers will be unable to bear. If those shops are driven out of the newspaper market, local papers such as those serving my constituency will also feel the dual impact of lost sales and a declining readership. That will affect everyone in this country.
	Local newspapers are a bastion of democracy in this country. As Members of the House, we might not always like what they say and might mutter about some of the letters that they carry, but they genuinely represent democracy and the free exchange of news and information in a local area. The possible options proposed by the OFT could act as a way of killing those organs of democracy. We should prevent that. News and information are not mere commodities that should be traded like jam and potatoes. Local papers and the ability to buy them are key requisites of a good, ordered and civilised society. The OFT cannot be allowed to kill off such an important function.
	The Deputy Leader of the House should talk to his colleagues in the Department for Trade and Industry and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I have written to them and they haveobliquelytaken in my concerns. I realise that they are in a difficult position because consultation is still under way, but I am still concerned, as are my local newspaper editors and newspaper managers. They are all equally horrified. They are all worried about the future of their local papers and their ability to reach out to a wide membership.
	I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will take what I have said seriously. He has always done so in the past.

David Amess: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) on his magnificent maiden speech. He spoke without notes, with great hand movements, with tremendous conviction, and with a wide knowledge of his constituency at a very early stage. I know I speak for everyone in the House when I wish him well for the future. He has a very bright future.
	I have a shopping list for the Deputy Leader of the House. On a number of occasions, he will have heard me raise the plight of my constituent Maajid Nawaz, who, along with two other Brits, has been detained in a Cairo prison for three and a half years. Very recently, Maajid Nawaz and the other two British detainees witnessed the beating of another prisoner. They went to his assistance, and were then attacked themselves. Those three British detainees are now in the second week of a hunger strike. Mrs. Abi Nawaz, who came to my surgery recently, is extremely worried, and I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will do what he can to persuade the Foreign Office to deal with what is currently a dire situation.
	I agonised about going public on the next issue that I intend to raise, but the family involved have now insisted that I do so. Last December Phil Collings, who was 20 years old, died outside Talk nightclub. The incident took place outside the club. One assailant held Phil around the neck, and the other held him from the front. The two men were arrested. One was the son of a police officer. I am advised by the family that the police never informed the pathologist who carried out the post mortem that Phil had suffered a blow. The result of the post mortem was therefore that he had died of natural causes. The family are not at all happy with the Crown Prosecution Service, which says it has decided to take no action. I have tried quietly to deal with Departments.
	The family have now insisted that I raise the matter because two weeks ago a local taxi driver picked up a local police officer who started talking about the CCTV footage of the incident, which clearly showed that Phil had been involved in an altercation with others before his death and had received a blow. At this moment, the official position is that no CCTV footage exists. When I spoke to the taxi driver on the telephone last week, he was happy for me to go public. He will not rest until Phil's mother gets justice for her son. He was a twin. The family have been destroyed by what has happened, and I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will convey my disquiet to the other Departments with which I have tried to deal in a normal fashion without going public.
	Let me raise a similar subject, and ask the Deputy Leader of the House to draw the attention of Home Office Ministers to the BBC 1 programme Drunk and Dangerous. Everyone saw it: it was peak viewing at 9 pm two months ago. Disgraceful scenes were shown. Will the Deputy Leader of the House kindly ask Home Office Ministers why the nightclubs featured in the programme receive no objections from the police when their licences come up for renewal? I find that quite extraordinary.
	The Deputy Leader of the House will also know that Southend council, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) and I have a dispute with the Office for National Statistics, which claims that there are 20,000 fewer people living in Southend than actually live there. On 20 June, I held a public meeting about local bus services, which have had to be cut as a result of the funding situation. So many people turned up to that meeting that they could not all fit into the building. We are talking about people aged from their 60s to their 90s, and it was heartbreaking to hear the devastating effect that those cuts have had on their quality of life. The Minister for Local Government is doing a splendid job in trying to support the local councilwe had a very constructive meeting with himand I raise this issue again simply to ask the Deputy Leader of the House to pass on my concerns.
	I am the chairman of the all-party group on solvent abuse, and today, the Department of Health published its framework for volatile substance abuse, which is very good news. Until now, the Society for the Prevention of Solvent and Volatile Substance AbuseRe-Solvhas had to depend on charitable giving from the national lottery. The national lottery and LloydsTSB, which used to fund Re-Solv, have withdrawn their funding saying that funding for substance abuse victims should come from the Government. I ask the Deputy Leader of the House to relay my concerns to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), and to request that she arrange a meetingI suspect that she will agreeso that we can address the funding problem.
	During the last such Adjournment debate, I told the House that Southend United were involved in the play-offs at Cardiff for promotion to league one. I am delighted to report to the House that they won. I also told the House then that St. Bernard's high school for girls, in Westcliff-on-Sea, reached the final of the under-13s national football championship, held at Aston Villa's ground. I am delighted to report that they won. I further told the House that I hoped that the UK would win the right to stage the Olympic games in 2012. I join Mr. Putin, Mr. Chirac and Mr. Schrder in being absolutely delighted that we will indeed be staging the Olympics. In a debate in Westminster Hall in March 2004, I asked our excellent Minister for Sport and Tourism whether, if were successful in that bid, Essex, and particularly Southend, could be involved. I ask the Deputy Leader of the House to find out from right hon. Gentleman how Essex and Southend will be involved in the staging of the Olympics.
	In conclusion, I wish everyone a very happy summer recess.

Siobhain McDonagh: Consequently, four months ago, Merton council called these plans in to be considered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. It believed that the plans were wrong and would increase health inequalities. Earlier this week, I was informed that my right hon. Friend is still considering whether to refer the case to the independent reconfiguration panel. Yet four months on, the NHS authorities are continuing to plough ahead with their plans, using public money, even though my right hon. Friend has not made up her mind. If a local authority were planning to reorganise its schools, it would not be allowed to continue spending taxpayers' money until the decision had been ratified. Why should it be different in the health service?
	Let me be clear: the decision to choose Sutton over St. Helier was wrong. The team behind the plans call themselves Better Healthcare Closer to Home. It is a good job that the Trade Descriptions Act does not apply to the NHS. Crucially, the organisation has neglected the needs of those who need the NHS the most. Those people will not be getting better health care.
	The issue of health inequalities has been all but forgotten by Better Healthcare Closer to Home. Why else would it be running down St. Helier when the area around St Helier has the lowest life expectancy, the most emergency admissions, the highest rate of accidents among children, the lowest levels of general good health, the most people with long-term illness, the most babies born with low birth weight, the most people without access to primary care, the lowest incomes, the largest black and ethnic minority population and the least likelihood of owning a car?
	Overall, it would be cheapest to patients if the hospital were based at St. Helier, but that has not been addressed by the Better Healthcare Closer to Home team, even though Government rules say that the cost to patients, not just the cost to hospital trusts, must be included in the plans. Even the Better Healthcare team itself admits that, if the Sutton site were chosen, people living in seven of the 10 most deprived postcodes in the region would have to travel further than they do at the moment.
	Any decision on hospital reorganisation has to undergo public consultation, but I believe that the consultation was biased against St. Helier. Thousands of letters and petitions were ignored, including thousands of views from my own constituents. Despite all that, St. Helier came out on top. Official documents rated St. Helier as the best optionbetter than Sutton by a factor of more than 7 per cent. If anything, the public were even more enthusiastic about St. Helier than the professionals. More people chose St. Helier than any other site, and even in the Sutton area, fewer than 10 per cent. of residents supported the Sutton site.
	The results of the consultation appear to me to be comprehensive, yet they have been reversed because Better Healthcare says that the consultation was actually inconclusive and that it now has new information in any case. Absurdly, it says that because people wanted their hospital to be accessible, their decision in favour of St. Helier was somehow incongruous. Better Healthcare Closer to Home simply cannot accept that the St. Helier choice is accessible because it is in the north of the catchment area, while Sutton is geographically more central. But more people live around St Helier. Two thirds of the people in the catchment area can get there within 20 minutes and everyone can get there within the golden hour. It has the best public transport, and total journey times for patients would be shorter to St. Helier than to any other site. Better Healthcare also claims that the overall impact on the NHS would be better if Sutton were chosen.
	I have a great deal to say but I appreciate that I must not go over my allotted time. However, one frustration felt by my constituents is that, although they are the least likely in the entire catchment area to be healthy, they are not represented on any of the boards that make decisions about our health service. I hope that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will take my concerns and views to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, so that the matter can be called in for review by the reconfiguration panel. In that way, my local health service can be prevented from squandering money on a plan that people do not want.

John McDonnell: I shall try to be as brief as possible. I want to raise yet again in the House the threat of the expansion of Heathrow airport to my constituency because things have moved on apace since the last summer Adjournment. I congratulate my colleagues the hon. Members for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) and for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) on the excellent work that they have done in recent months ingeniously to raise this issue on the Floor of the House as often as they possibly can. The whole community in our area is now raised against the proposals that BAA has published in recent months.
	As hon. Members may well know, during the past 15 years at Heathrow airport, we have had a terminal 4 inquiry, at which we were told that that was the full extent of the airport's expansion. We then had a terminal 5 inquiry, at which BAA wrote to other hon. Members, me and my constituents to say that, if it received permission for terminal 5, there would be no third runway. In fact, terminal 5 doubled the airport's capacity. Within months, BAA reneged on its commitment and proposed a third runway.
	The third runway is now outlined in the master plan that BAA published only months ago. It includes not just a third runway, but a sixth terminal. We will therefore lose villages wholesale. At Sipson village, 700 homes will be completely demolished. Life in the villages of Harmondswoth, Longford, Harlington and Cranford Cross will become unliveable because the air pollution that results from a third runway will go beyond the limits of the European directive on air poisoning.
	Let us return to the Government's figures on such developments. The last detailed study was carried out in the early 1990s and put the impact at about 4,000 homes. So 10,000 people in my constituency will be forcibly removed from their community. That is the largest clearance of a population since the Scottish clearances themselves. We face the closure of three primary schools. Whole communities will cease to exist. Community centres, greens, churches, pubs, doctors' surgeries, shops and businessesa whole communitywill be demolished as a result of a search for profits for BAA and the aviation industry.
	The Government have set in train a decision-making process, called Project Heathrow, during which a number of research papers will be developed by experts with representatives from the local authorities, BAA and the industry. They will report in late 2006, when the Government can make their decision. In the meantime, my whole area is blighted, with families who are unable to move because they cannot sell their property, and families who are unable to make decisions on their long-term future. Why? Because BAA wants to maximise its profits.
	Last week, BAA announced profits for this year of 500 millionhalf a billion pounds. I attended BAA's annual general meetingFriends of the Earth bought me a single share; it has generated 12p this year, which I shall have to declare and return to Friends of the Earth, although I am sure that the organisation will not use it. At the AGM, I asked BAA's directors whether before making any decision they would bring these matters back to shareholders for a decision. The chairman of BAA made a strong recommendation against that resolution, which fell thanks to the proxy votes that he held in his pocket. He went on to award himself a 15 per cent. increase in his salary and an increase in his shareholding. The lessons are, first, that shareholder democracy does not work in this country and, secondly, that BAA is willing to put profits for itself and its directors ahead of the interests of not only my constituents, but the constituents of every MP representing the London borough of Hillingdon and west London.
	The Minister should take back to the Secretary of State for Transport, the Prime Minister and the rest of the Cabinet the message that if the Government decide next year that the third runway will go ahead, they will face the biggest environmental battle that this country has ever seen. Not only will there be parliamentary action on the Floor of the House and legislative combat, but I believe that there will be direct action on a scale not seen before in this country or in Europe as a whole, because there is so much anger about the forced migration of so many people.
	What has been brought to my attention in recent days about the operation of the airport is deeply worrying. After the London bombings, we have had a number of anxious moments at the Heathrow terminalsthere have been several security scares. It is now being reported that there has been a failure to train key staff to deal adequately with security matters. I have written today to the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Transport saying that in the light of the London bombings we must review once again the security arrangements at Heathrow, especially the training of staff, so that we can deal properly with the safety and security of not only the travelling public, but my many constituents who work at Heathrow airport.

George Mudie: I shall be brief, as I know other Members want to get in.
	I want to place on record a matter that is of growing concern in my constituencythe implementation of the asylum seekers dispersal policy. The dispersal policy made perfect sense when asylum seekers landed in Dover and elsewhere in great numbers. They competed for scarce local resources in a way that helped neither the residents of those areas nor the asylum seekers themselves, so to disperse them around the country made sense. However, the way that that is being done in Leeds and in my constituency is unfair and insensitive.
	Let me explain. Asylum seekers come through one of two courses. They may come through the National Asylum Support Service, in which case they are placed nationally and contracts are bought from the private sector, or they may come through the local council. There are eight constituencies in Leeds. Three of the constituencies seem to be home for the majority of the asylum seekers. My constituency is probably the recipient of the second largest total. NASS has placed contracts with landlords who have bought up the cheapest houses in the city. With the amount they get from NASS, it is sensible for them to find the cheapest housing. They are making a great deal of money, but they have caused havoc to the cheaper end of the housing market and they have caused havoc in the area because of the sheer numbers.
	Parallel to that, the city council is taking up council houses in the same area for asylum seekers. In one ward of my city, Harehills and Gipton, an inner-city ward where there is great poverty and deprivation, we have a huge number of asylum seekers. That is causing all sorts of problems. In the past two weeks the Home Office has suspended the arrival of any more, on the advice of the police and the local community, but that will be reviewed in six weeks and I fear the influx will restart.
	If we have such large numbers coming from different areas and speaking different languages, consider the problems that that causes for an inner-city primary school and the problems already faced by staff teaching inner-city children, for whom that is their one life chance. There may be nine different languages being spoken, and the teachers, with very few additional resources from the Department for Education and Skills, struggle to handle the new situation in an inner-city school where they would struggle anyway.
	Let us consider medical services. It is a struggle to get doctors to come into the inner city and to get on their list in the inner city. It is difficult to find a doctor who will put new patients on their panel. If the asylum seekers' situation is mishandled, it can cause all sorts of problems.
	The Home Office must review the policy. The number of asylum seekers is falling and there is time to review the situation, to think about it and to be more sensitive in placing them. I am in favour of a cap, so that if I take my fair share, which I will cheerfully do, I do not have to take the share of other areas or constituencies which, for one reason or another, do not have premises available for asylum seekers.
	Asylum seekers come to the United Kingdom with shattered lives. They are escaping death and civil war, and they want a friendly reception. Yorkshire people will give them a friendly reception. My city will give them a friendly reception, but the dispersal policy must be kept in perspective and needs to be more sensitive. I hope that the Minister will convey that to the Home Office.

Paul Burstow: I want to raise the case of one of my constituents, Mr. Vinchenzo Favata. Last September, he was diagnosed with cancer and his consultant at the Royal Marsden prescribed a drug called Glivec, which has been appraised by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The treatment did not begin until November because approval for the funding of the drug from the Sutton and Merton primary care trust was delayed.
	Three weeks ago, my constituent was scanned and it was found that the tumour had started growing again. The clinician recommended an increase in the dosage of the life-saving drug, but such an increase required the primary care trust's panel to make a further decision. The panel met yesterday and did not agree to the extra funding, which has plunged the family into despair and limbo.
	Decisions in the NHS are meant to be taken on the grounds of clinical evidence, clinical need and clinical judgment. Despite a clear clinical recommendation, why has my local primary care trust seen fit to deny Mr. Favata an increased dosage of the life-saving drug to fight his cancer? I have been in touch with the primary care trust and the family is appealing the decision, but I raise the matter today in the hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will draw it to the attention of Health Ministers so that they can take action to stop a practice that seems to be the rationing of drugs on the basis of cost alone.
	I also want to talk about planning in my constituency. I suspect that the problem of predatory developers affects many hon. Members who represent suburban and urban constituencies. Such developers are out and about in my constituency looking for every last little piece of back-garden land on which they can erect flats. A company called Blazemaster has submitted a planning application to demolish 26 houses in Cheam Common road and Lavender avenue and build 133 flats in their place, thus depositing numerous extra cars on to a road infrastructure that is barely able to cope with the traffic already on it and imposing additional stresses and strains on local services.
	Such behaviour cannot be a tolerable way in which to manage the need for additional housing. It is a direct consequence of PPG3, which includes back-garden land in the definition of brownfield land. The daft designation fails to recognise the biodiversity offered by back-garden land and the other contributions that it makes, so I was delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) advanced the case for re-designating back-garden land when she introduced her ten-minute Bill yesterday. I hope that time will be found to consider the Bill and that it will find favour because it would do a good deal to reassure my constituents and rebuild confidence in the system.
	I agreed with much of what the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said in her speech. I hope that we will be able to take forward better health care closer to home and make sure that we do not have the new hospital in Sutton, but at St. Helier.

Michael Wills: I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about important changes that have taken place to the borough council that serves most of my constituency. Over the past eight years, Swindon borough council has failed to deliver the services that the people of Swindon deserve. The council failed between 1997 and 2001, when the Labour party ran it, and it has failed since 2001, which was when the Conservatives took it over. Between 2001 and 2004, the council's overall performance varied between poor and weak. The social services got a zero star rating in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
	I think that things went wrong because when Swindon became a unitary authority in 1997, it was left inadequately prepared by the previous Government and never recovered from that bad start. Every day for the past eight years, the consequences of the failures have hurt people who depend on public services. Far from helping people, the council all too often made difficult and stressful situations worse. Today, however, there is clear evidence that the council is beginning to turn itself around. There are new management systems in place. It has capable new directors and a new, highly-effective and capable chief executive.
	What has happened? National Government have intervened on the local authority. The Department for Education and Skills drove through changes to such an extent that within two years, Ofsted found that the number of functions performed by the local education authority that were rated as satisfactory or better had increased from 30 per cent. to 85 per cent.
	Ministers and officials from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister have been working closely with the council to transform the delivery of services to residents and supporting it to do so. It has lent Swindon borough council one of its most capable officials, who has years of experience of local government and helping failing local authorities to turn themselves around. She has been working with the council over the past few months to introduce rigorous accounting systems and to ensure that, at last, it focuses on the recipients of services. The people of Swindon owe a debt of gratitude to Anne-Marie Carre and all the officials in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister who have done much to help them. Swindon has received extra financial resources from the Government. Not only has grant increased by 30 per cent. since 2001, but one-off additional funding has been provided such as 1 million to build extra capacity in the council, and there is also the possibility of a further 1 million.
	None of that would have been possible without the dedication and expertise of the previous Minister with responsibility for local government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), whom we thank. It is reassuring that he has been succeeded by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East and Saddleworth (Mr. Woolas), who has already demonstrated his concern that Swindon stays on the right track.
	The recovery process has involved a partnership, and I pay tribute to both the ruling group and the Labour group on Swindon borough council for their willingness to embrace the improvement agenda constructively and to work co-operatively with the ODPM. A great deal remains to be done and the situation is by no means perfect, but the council is on the mend.
	The partnership that turned around the council has much to contribute to the debate about the division of powers in our democracy, about which we have already heard quite a lot today. When we hear fashionable talk about localism, the debate is always focused on the benefits of devolving power to the smallest possible political unit, and there are, of course, benefits to that approach. However, local can also mean limited and restricted, and localism can work against the equitable distribution of resources throughout the country, a subject about which we have heard a lot this afternoon. In the past, localism has also worked against a cohesive sense of national identity. Such fashionable talk does not contemplate the consequences when localism is not enough and local authorities fail, and it forgets that the least advantaged and the most vulnerable get hurt first and worst when local authorities fail in the same way as Swindon failed.
	In my view, the ODPM has helped to turn around the situation in Swindon. Perhaps the defenders of localism would argue that in time the people of Swindon would elect councillors who would turn around the council themselves without such intervention. However, real life does not work like that, and it did not work like that in Swindon. The people of Swindon elected new councillors who had the power and the money to make significant improvements, but, for whatever reason, they did not make them. The people of Swindon elected new representatives over and over again, but none of those representatives were any more able than their predecessors to make the necessary improvements.
	Central Government can be sclerotic, slow and clog up the delivery of public services, but central Government can also be good governmenta national Government working nationally and locally for the good. The fashionably derided system of targets and inspections quantified Swindon borough council's failures and provided an objective basis for the intervention that is turning round its performance. National Government provide the breadth and depth of expertise that is not always found in one local authority. Swindon's experience demonstrates the benefits of national Government.
	I hope that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will take my points to the ODPM, because we are very grateful for everything that it has done in Swindon. In partnership with the Labour group and the ruling group on Swindon borough council, the ODPM is about to make a difference for the people of Swindon.

Nigel Evans: I am grateful to hon. Members for cutting their speeches, and I will do likewise to ensure that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) is able to participate.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) on his tremendous maiden speech. My maiden speech was rubbish. [Hon. Members: Hear, hear!] Yes; I know that that is hard to believe. At least this speech will be short, which will improve its quality, but I still wake up in a sweat thinking about my maiden speech.
	We are about to go into one of the longest summer recesses everI know the reasons whyand it would be useful if hon. Members were able to table written questions during that period. I would not expect the answers as quickly as when the House is sitting, but it would be useful.
	I want to discuss the reclassification of cannabis. My private Member's Bill, which sadly ran out of time in the previous Parliament, would have set up a commission to examine the reclassification of cannabis. I was told that that could not happen, but the Government have now set up their own inquiry because of the evidence on the long-term psychotic influence of cannabis. Dr. John Henry of St. Mary's hospital has said that just as cigarette smoking has ill effects on the body, so cannabis has similar effects on the mind.
	A huge amount of evidence has appeared from a number of quarters since the reclassification of cannabis, so it is right for the Government to re-examine the issue. I have been told that the commission may not report until December, although we had thought that it would do so in the summer. If the Minister can encourage the inquiry to make its recommendations soon, perhaps we can get cannabis put back into class B.
	When cannabis was reclassified, the message sent, particularly to young people, was wrong. Believe it or not, 42 per cent. of youngsters at school were offered controlled substances in 2003, 1 per cent. of under-11s have tried cannabis, and one third of people under 15 admit to having tried it, too. Clearly they were sent the wrong message. When the commission reportsand I hope that it will do so as I feel it oughtwe should be able to move swiftly to reclassifying cannabis and putting it back into class B.

Chris Grayling: I shall be brief, to allow the Minister the chance to respond to as many comments as possible.
	I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) who made an eloquent speech. We envy him his constituency, which he described with great eloquence and which is clearly a wonderful place to represent. We admire his constituents, but perhaps we do not have the same sense of envy about the fact that he has three former Members of Parliament to deal with. I also admire him for his achievement in being the first Gujarati Member of this House. I hope very much that he will not be the last. My party is committed to increasing ethnic minority representation here, and we fielded more candidates than any other party at the general election from the ethnic minorities. Sadly, not enough of them were elected, but that is something that we will deal with in future.
	The debate has been wide ranging but has shown how much commonality there is in the issues that we face in different constituencies. We heard about water supply issues in Somerton and Frome and the water supply issues created in Castle Point by development problems. We heard about unmanned railway stations in south-west London, specifically Lewisham, and in Sevenoaks. That is certainly something with which I can identify as I see the spread of antisocial behaviour in my own area. Members talked with pride of their constituencies: the hon. Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr. Kemp) spoke of the growth of Sunderland and the role that Nissan has played; Nissan is to be admired for what it has achieved in this country, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will remember that it was the last Conservative Government who brought Nissan here.
	We have heard about individual cases from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), whom I congratulate on the footballing successes that he described. We heard about individual issues from my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Fraser), who talked about the great difficulty of the impact of debt on individuals, and from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), who talked about the shortcomings that we all know exist in the front line of the national health service.
	We heard about issues that affect probably every constituency, such as the pressures of development, not simply as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), but in the problems in west London to do with the future of Heathrow airport. We heard from the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) about the reverse of that problem, about areas that have housing stock available being perhaps excessively used for the dispersal of asylum seekers. We heard also about the problems being caused in back-land development from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, and that is something with which I can identify just down the road in my constituency. I share, too, the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) about the congestion charge. The Mayor of London should proceed with that change with great caution.
	We heard, too, about important national and international issues, including nuclear proliferation, on which it is essential for the whole world that matters are got right for the future. The points of my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) about cannabis were very well made.
	I am sure that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) will not be surprised that I have saved her comments for last. I represent the other half of what I must emphasise is the Epsom and St. Heliernot the St. Helier and EpsomNHS trust. I do not envy any NHS employee faced with the task of hospital reconfiguration. They can never win, and they can never please everyone. The House will not be surprised to learn that I could set out in detail equal to the hon. Lady's the reasons why she is wrong, why Epsom has better transport links and how, if there is no accident and emergency department in Epsom, there will be 150,000 people in Surrey without an A and E department within five miles of their homes, while in the north of the area, there are three other major acute hospitals close by.
	May I say to the Minister and the hon. Lady that the siting of the hospital in this project is, in many ways, not the key point? The key is whether the project is viable in the first place. I have two huge concerns that should be common to the hon. Lady, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, myself and other affected Members. First, the national health service is putting forward a scheme that, by its own admission, replaces one unaffordable model of care with another. We have not yet been given evidence by the national health service that it is delivering a packagean expensive private finance initiative schemethat will not ultimately lead to cuts in community-based services as the NHS seeks to pay the mortgage.
	The other point is that we have yet to get a clear explanation of how the NHS can afford to reduce the number of acute beds in our area by one third. Until I hear answers to those two questions, I remain unpersuaded that this scheme is viable. I hope that in passing on comments from the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, the Minister will bear my thoughts in mind as well.
	This has been a good and wide-ranging debate, and we look forward to hearing from the Minister. I wish all Members of the House and you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, a very pleasant recess.

Nigel Griffiths: This has been a very well informed debate. I am pleased that hon. Members curtailed their comments to allow 18 Members to contribute. Of course, the debate was necessarily cut short by the sad death of Sir Edward Heath, but none the less many issues were raised, and I will try to deal with as many of them as I can.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr. Kemp) will welcome, as I do, the publication on Monday of the youth Green Paper. It is important that we applaud what young people do, as too often we are quick to criticise the tiny minority who need more care and attention. I will ensure that the Home Secretary is aware of his comments about Wearside Women in Need.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) talked about a hospital in his area. If I was in his position, I would share his worry that, despite the vast increase in the capital budget and the dozens of new hospitals built and substantial hospital repairs that have taken place, his area has been left behind. I will ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health is aware of that. Equally, I will ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is aware of his points about water and the A303.
	My long-term friend and distinguished colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang), raised an issue that he has championed throughout his political life. I will ensure that my colleagues at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office take heed of his concerns and respond accordingly.
	The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) raised several matters. I would say to him, in a spirit of goodwill, that I have the Hansard of the exchange with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, and I think that the hon. Gentleman may have done him a disservice, as I am not sure that he gave such a commitment. I know that the hon. Gentleman will look at that. I suggest that he write to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister about when the planning legislation review as regards Travellers is likely to be published, because that is a matter of concern for many Members on both sides of the House.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Jim Dowd) talked about an issue that was raised by the hon. Member for Sevenoaksthe lack of staffing in railway stations and the problems that that poses.
	The hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) gave an excellent maiden speech, as others have said. His family must be very proud of him. I am sure that breast cancer and, in future, other causes have found an eloquent advocate.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) talked about newspaper distribution in supermarkets. I know that he has taken that up assiduously with my right hon. Friends at their respective Departments.
	The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) gets the prize for raising the most issuessix or seven. I know that he will forgive me if I do not cover them all, but I am happy to ensure that he is written to. On the case of the Briton detained abroad, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Office officials and the ambassador raise that at every conceivable opportunity, and they will note his comments.
	The hon. Gentleman raised other important matters such as the programme, Drunk and Dangerous, and questioned why local licensing committees are granting licenses in such circumstances. I share his concerns, as will the whole House. We give powers to local licensing committees and we expect them to take the advice of local police and other authorities. We want firm action to be taken because drunkenness is one of the most serious problems in society. There is no quick fix but it puts tremendous pressure on our health and other services.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) raised an issue about which there are clearly diverging views. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will want to study those views and representations carefully. However, it is for the primary care trust to make a decision and weigh up the evidence. I know from my hon. Friend's reputation that she will have piled up the evidence and made a good case. I am sure that the shadow Leader of the House will also make a forceful case.
	The hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) raised an issue that several hon. Members mentioned: the threat to the green belt. He also referred to the plight of elderly patients in the health service and joined other hon. Members in praising almost all health service workers. Of course, the Government take seriously any concerns such as those that he highlighted. His comments on Cyprus represent his point of view. There are strong views on both sides of the argument.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned Heathrow. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) referred to asylum. Clearly, those issues are important.
	If hon. Members will forgive me as we approach the last minute, I shall write to other hon. Members and ensure that their concerns are raised.
	I join my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West in praising the work of Iain Hepplewhite as a Department of Trade and Industry press officer, with whom I worked. He served both Governments well. Our thoughts are with him and his parents.
	It being two hours after the commencement of proceedings, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, pursuant to Order[19 July].

Andrew Selous: It might be helpful to the House if I briefly outline some of the facts about Dunstable college. It started off training workers in the printing industry. It should now more properly be called South Bedfordshire college, because although it is based in Dunstable it serves all the residents of south Bedfordshire, and notably of Leighton Buzzard, the largest town in my constituency, where the college has a learning shop. A large number of courses are also run on the Kingsland campus in Houghton Regis and the college also functions on its main site in Dunstable. It is particularly important to note that many of the college's students travel considerable distances to get to it from places throughout south Bedfordshire and a long way into mid-Bedfordshire. All this means that the college's continued well-being is vital to the future of our area.
	I should like to run through a few statistics. The college reduced its adult provision in 200203, in agreement with the Bedfordshire and Luton learning and skills council. Since then, it has met its targets every year and received support for its plans at every stage from the local LSC. College provision has been completely reviewed and the college has not asked to grow adult provision. It has replaced non-priority adult provision systematically to target priority areas.
	The college is also a sub-regional trade union studies centre. It has only 18 per cent. of its provision categorised as other, and it has grown its 16-to-19 numbers year on year from 200102. It has rebalanced its provision in the way in which the Government wanted it to do. The college has played the game and done exactly what the local LSC asked it to do, in accordance with the Government's agenda, over the past few years.
	The Minister's surname is Hope, and that is what the students of Dunstable college are looking for tonight, because I have to tell him that all is not well with the college. This year, out of the blue, its budget has been cut by 833,000. That figure is made up as follows: for 19-plus students, there will be a cut of 533,000; for additional learning support, a cut of 73,000; the ethnic minority student achievement grant will be cut by 33,000; the learner support fund will be cut by 22,000; work-based learning will have 150,000 taken off its budget; and the local intervention and development fund will have a 22,000 reduction. That adds up to a total cut of 833,000, which is a 10 per cent. cut in funding out of a total budget of some 8 million or so. That came as a complete surpriseas I have said, the local learning and skills council had fully backed the direction of the college at every stage since 2003.
	What do those cuts mean? The college will educate 1,000 fewer learners locally, 25 college staff are losing their jobsmost of which are full-timeand a further 15 staff have received at risk of redundancy notices. All of that is in an area in which the Government plan to add an extra 43,000 homes, as part of the Milton Keynes and south midlands sustainable communities plan, with which the Minister will be familiar from his previous incarnation as a Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
	Although Dunstable is particularly badly hit, it is not alone. As the Minister will know, there will be a cut of 200,000 adult education places across the country, including courses in basic skills to improve poor adult literacy and numeracy, which cost us some 10 billion a year nationally. The sector also faces some 4,000 to 5,000 redundancies. Dr. John Brennan, the Association of College' chief executive, a man not usually prone to strong language, has said that the Government are presiding over a funding shambles with 200607 to be worse stilla further disaster waiting to happen.
	How could this be avoided? The Government have set up the biggest quango in Europe in the form of the Learning and Skills Council, which has a budget of 330 million to administer adult education. The Further Education Funding Council used to do that job for a 15 million budget. With a growing budget, it should be possible to expand 16 to 19 provision, which the Government properly want to do, and which the Opposition recognise as a valid and important objective. That should be possible, however, without cutting adult provision. It should not be a case of either/or where the overall budget is growing.
	Nor is the Government's national approach sensitive to the differing needs of local communities, such as in my constituency of South-West Bedfordshire. Many older workers, from the BTR and Trico factories that have closed down recently in Dunstable, from the Lancer Boss and Courtaulds factories in Leighton Buzzard, or from the WOM International factory that closed down in Leighton Buzzard in the past couple of weeks, need to re-skill to get back into the workplace. The cuts in adult provision will make that very much more difficult.
	The Government say that colleges can make up those cuts to their budgets by collecting fees. That simply will not wash. Chris Vesey, the outstandingly good principal of Dunstable college, whom south Bedfordshire is very lucky to have, said in an e-mail to me on this point:
	Dunstable college has progressively increased fees to adult part time students over the last 2 years. We noticed a reduction in enrolments as a result and have closed what we would have called 'leisure courses' as non viable. These included watercolour painting, photography and flower arranging. These courses were replaced by plumbing, electrical installation and ESOL
	English as a second language. She continued:
	In an agreement with other Bedfordshire colleges we have introduced a fee of 120 per year for our 19 plus students on full time courses,
	with effect from September 2005,
	in addition to the materials fee that they already pay which varies from 25 to 120 depending on the course . . . The total that I could collect will not make much of an impression on the funding cut as it is a small amount compared to the actual costs of delivery.
	I therefore hope that the Minister will not say that the answer to the college's funding crisis is for it to raise more fees.
	The Government have increased funding for the sector, but have not always done so in a way that achieves the greatest value for money. I am sure that the Minister will come to realise, as just about everyone in the sector has, that unintended consequences are involved in the policy priorities on which he and his colleagues have embarked. I ask him to be as reasonable as he ca, and consider whether those really were the intended consequences of the national policy that he set out. I sent questions to the Minister's private office in advance, and I should be grateful if he could answer them.
	What work did the Department undertake, or what work is it undertaking, to keep FE staff who have been made redundant? We know that there is a shortage of FE staff nationally in key courses. Those people are a vital national asset. Is the Department really content for the national total of between 4,000 and 5,000, 25 of whom are at Dunstable college, to leave the education sector altogether? What work is being done to get them into the 16 to 18 sector on which the Government want to concentrate?
	Will the Minister tell me, please, what risk assessment was carried out to ensure that the FE sector was not seriously damaged by short notice major cuts in college priorities? It is worth pointing out that the LSC's letter sent to colleges in November 2004, followed up by a circular in January 2005, made it clear that the cuts would not happen. They are very recent news for colleges, and it is the shortness of the period within which they must adjust to the cuts that has caused such huge difficulties.
	Has the Department undertaken any research into the ability and willingness of employers and individuals to pay higher fees for their courses? I understand from correspondence with the Minister and his colleagues that the Department is arguing on those lines, butas I made clear in quoting the college principal's wordsthat is not an option for us in south Bedfordshire.Can the Department guarantee that all extra demand for 16 to 18-year-olds in colleges will be fully funded? Can it confirm that there will be a reduction in funding for apprenticeships for those who will be over 19 in 200506? That issue is particularly close to my heart.
	How was the process used to assure equity of access to 19-plus courses for those living in various parts of the country? I fear that there will be a lottery of provision across the country because of the uneven way in which the cuts are falling. Not all colleges are in the position of Dunstable college; some are fortunate enough to have received a budget increase this year. Finally, what process was used to consider whether 19-plus provision was in the priority areasspecialist, or of value to the local economic environment?
	I shall end my speech before my allocated time runs out, in the hope that the Minister may be generous enough to let me intervene on those specific points. There are many very worried staff at Dunstable college. Our area has taken some big knocks industrially over the years. We are the focus of Government attention in terms of massive housing growth and, as I said earlier, I believe that these are unintended consequences of the Minister's policy. I hope that this debate will provide an opportunity for the position to be reconsidered, so that we can give some hope back to the college.

Phil Hope: Despite that, there is an issue that we have to address, but first, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Andrew Selous: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way generously again. The college has no quibble over the application of the formula by the Learning and Skills Council other than the fact that the Department directed it to do so. I have no doubt that the Government's own criteria were applied fairly, as instructed. The fact remains that that is pretty cold comfort to a college that has had an 833,000 cut in its budget, even though it did exactly what the LSC asked it to do all the way through from 2003, including significant growth in its 16-to-18 provision. I do not feel that the Minister has yet dealt with those particular issues.